The Slow Fall
by Rayet
Summary: Kakashi, Sakura and Sai travel to Reed Village to dismantle a remnant of Orochimaru's labs. It was meant to be a simple mission, but of course, things get complicated. KakaSaku
1. Chapter 1

The nurse sitting behind the reception desk barely glanced at Kakashi before jerking her thumb toward the corridor over her shoulder. "She's in room 309."

Kakashi contemplated playing dumb, asking who she meant and why she assumed that he was looking for them. But he suspected that it would only cause him further embarrassment. It seemed the copy ninja, with his famous aversion to hospitals, was spending too much time with a certain medic to escape notice.

That probably didn't bode well.

He knocked softly on the door to 309, and whoever was on the other side called out, "come in!"

Inside, Haruno Sakura was bandaging the upper arm of a young girl who couldn't have been more than seven years old. She glanced up briefly and smiled at Kakashi.

"What's up?"

"We've been summoned to the Hokage's office."

Sakura returned her attention to the injured girl. "Sure, I'm almost done with this. Don't worry Satoko-chan, it should be good as new in just a minute. But as a tip for the future, don't let your brother use you for target practice."

The little girl nodded solemnly, but as the bandage was drawn tight and held in place with a clip, she gasped aloud and her eyes filled with tears.

Kakashi wished he'd just waited outside; crying always made him feel awkward. But Sakura's smile never wavered. "There now, it's not so bad. It will heal up in no time, you'll see. But to help it on its way I'll give it an extra bit of healing magic if you like?"

"He-healing magic?" the girl looked dubious, but was no longer crying.

Sakura nodded, and pulled a tube of lipstick from her pocket. She carefully applied a layer to her lips, and then gave a gentle, maternal kiss on the top layer of the bandage. The kiss left an imprint of pink lipstick lips behind.

Kakashi had seen the trick once before. Sakura infused the kiss with a little chakra that numbed the pain temporarily. Usually she wouldn't bother using chakra at all for such a small cut, but she said it made children feel better about their first brushes with injury.

Satoko left smiling, and Sakura collected her things.

"She was almost better behaved than you were."

Kakashi blushed, grateful for his mask. "Her injury was also considerably less severe than mine."

Sakura shrugged, smiling. "I don't discriminate based on the pain of my patients. Or the age."

Naruto was adjusting poorly to his role as Hokage's apprentice.

The desk was cluttered with scrolls and files, with no semblance of an organisational system. Naruto sat behind it all looking decidedly overwhelmed. Shizune was no doubt helping as best she could, but it was clear to Sakura that her friend was still coming to grips with just how much paperwork was involved in running a country.

Tsunade sat behind the main desk, scroll in hand. Sai was also there, waiting for Kakashi and Sakura to arrive. Beside Tsunade's desk stood a portly old man in reed hat. Presumably he was the client.

"C-rank mission in the Hidden Sound." Tsunade wasted no time getting started. "Reed Village report that a group of bandits have been sighted on the forbidden mountain, where it seems one of Orochimaru's abandoned labs is located. The village has no shinobi of their own, so they've tasked us with cleaning up Orochimaru's mess before the bandits do anything dangerous. Bunta here," she gestured to the man in the hat, "has come as a representative of Reed, and will guide you back to his village. Naruto will be remaining here to train, but I have every confidence the three of you can handle this mission. Any questions?"

Naruto sighed miserably from behind his paperwork, and the others shook their heads.

"Very well. Make your preparations and move out at once."

The trip to Reed Village would take one and a half days, and so the team had packed bedrolls for the first and last nights on the road. While at the village, Bunta assured them, they would be well accommodated.

"We don't have much," he said, "But if you truly can remove the scourge of that lab and those bandits, then what's ours is yours."

The going was always slower when escorting by a civilian, but the weather was spring beautiful and the road was wide and clear for most of the way to Sound. Sakura raised her face to the sun that filtered gently through the leaves. What with the relative peace that had swept the world lately, it had been a little while since she'd gone out on a mission, and she missed the feeling of freedom and camaraderie it instilled. Of course she'd seen plenty of her teammates around town in less formal settings. Now that everyone was old enough to drink, they could be found at the bar often enough.

In fact, she thought as she walked, that was probably the reason her and Kakashi had become so close of late. They had run into each other one night when Sakura was trying to forget an operation that had been a tragic failure. Nobody's fault, but the patient was quite young and every medic had been affected by their death. Kakashi had taken one look at his old student drinking by herself with unhealthy determination, and offered to buy her a drink. "Sure," she shrugged, and Kakashi disappeared to the bar. Hazy though the recollection was, she could still remember the way she'd blushed at the romantic cliché of a handsome man buying her a drink. _Do I consider Kakashi a 'handsome man?'_ She had asked herself, and in hindsight that was probably the first time she'd allowed herself to think of her sleepy-eyed captain as a man at all.

Glancing over at him now as he plodded languidly along, chatting to Bunta, she couldn't help but smile. He had been a good teacher, in his own way, ever since she'd graduated the academy. He had been an excellent team captain, and during the war he was the sort of commander you'd be happy to die alongside. And now, ever since he'd offered to buy her a drink, and come back from the bar with a glass of water and the promise that he'd get her drunk arse back home in one piece, she had considered him a friend.

Kakashi seemed to notice her looking at him, and shot her a brief, eye-crinkling smile over Bunta's shoulder. She returned it, a half-second too late for him to notice, and returned to her reverie. Two questions had burned in her mind for a while now, ever since they had started getting closer.

Did she see Kakashi as something more than a friend?

And could he ever see her the same way?


	2. Chapter 2

The road had narrowed considerably by the time night fell. The woods had pushed in close to its edges, forming a curtain of blackness that even a ninja's vision struggled to penetrate. But they couldn't camp on the road, so they would have to take their chances with finding a suitable clearing amongst the trees. If it had just been Kakashi, Sakura and Sai they might have just pushed on through the night and rested an extra half day at the village. But Bunta didn't have their constitution.

Eventually Sai came across a small patch of ground that was more or less useable. They could unroll three of the four bedrolls at least. Kakashi leaned against a tree.

"We can take turns keeping watch," he decided.

"Do you think there's a possibility of ambush out here?" Sai asked, frowning.

Bunta piped up. "No chance those lowlife bandits are this far away from the mountain. They're cruel, but they're cowards at heart." He laughed as though this were funny.

"No, I don't think we're in danger. But there isn't enough room for us all to sleep at once, so the three of us will have to sleep in shifts." Kakashi explained.

Sai raised his hand. "I'll take first shift." Kakashi and Sakura shrugged, and threw themselves down on the lumpy bedrolls beside Bunta.

For some reason, Kakashi struggled to get comfortable. He was in the middle, caught between Bunta on one side, who was already beginning to snore, and Sakura on the other. Sleeping like this had never felt like a problem before. Team Seven and later Team Kakashi had slept in close quarters for years, crushed together when conditions were bad, and always preferring to stay close even when there was room to sprawl. It was a comfort to have a trusted comrade at your back when you were sleeping on a mission.

Yet now he was too aware of Sakura's body heat, even though the extra warmth should have been welcome in the absence of a fire. He was certain if he got any closer to her they'd both go up in flames. He tried to lie still and put her from his mind, but she was still shifting around trying to get comfortable, occasionally crossing the border between her bedroll and his. It was maddening, and he had no idea why.

One time, about six weeks ago, they had slept this close despite there being no mission to justify it. Thinking about that night made Kakashi want to roll over and scream into his pillow.

They had both been knock-out drunk and talking about the good old days, something most shinobi ended up doing at some point. "Not that I miss all the dying. Or the killing, for that matter," she had said, slumped over her drink with an expression that made her girl's face look old. _Not a girl anymore,_ he had reminded himself.

He was pretty sure they had stayed at the bar until last drinks, at which point he must have mentioned a half bottle of saké he still had at home.

They never drank that saké. He'd left Sakura on the couch pretending to admire his minimalist bachelor pad, and gone to fetch the alcohol from the kitchen. His hand had barely closed around the bottle when the whole situation felt suddenly changed.

What had seemed like two friends sharing a few drinks and memories like they did many nights these days, now felt closer to a date. This was the time in the evening when you drank that extra glass of alcohol that made your inhibitions disappear for good, and made that kind of conversation that was less about what was said and more about how badly you wanted to be kissing instead of talking.

And what surprised Kakashi most was that it felt like the natural conclusion to the last few hours, maybe even the last few months.

"You coming back? I'm getting thirsty," Sakura called from the other room, and the whole thing felt like a script, a moment that would play itself out perfectly, and change everything.

He reappeared with a steaming teapot and two cups. "Change of plan," he said cheerfully, and for a moment Sakura seemed perplexed (maybe even disappointed?), but soon she was smiling again, saying tea was a wonderful idea, sober them up a bit.

That was how they had found themselves the next morning, resting peacefully on opposite ends of Kakashi's couch. Cups of cold tea sat on the floor beside them, abandoned after the conversation finally died down into slumber.

When Sai gently tapped him awake, he was surprised to realise he had actually slept in the end. Sakura continued to lie still beside him, facing away toward the trees. He got up quietly and swapped places with Sai, who lay on top of the covers and was asleep, or at the very least still and silent, within moments. Kakashi tried to get comfortable leaning against a slightly bent tree. Honestly, it wasn't much rougher than the bed, plus standing watch over his comrades was a safe and natural position for Kakashi. He could feel himself becoming more alert and invigorated, even though there was really no chance of danger. _This is my place,_ he thought to himself. _This is what makes sense._

Being near Sakura had gotten increasingly difficult; not because it was unpleasant (on the contrary, any time he was with her became the best part of his day), but because he knew it could never be more than lunch breaks, training sessions, and occasional cups of tea. She was too good for him. It sounded like a cliché, and perhaps it was, but she was like the sun. Everyone loved her, craved her warmth. It wasn't right that she should waste so much of her light on him.

He would have been stupid to think Sakura hadn't experienced her share of conflict. But she hadn't seen what the last war was like. He struggled to talk to her about elements of his past. He barely recognised his younger self, the boy with a talent for murder. He dreamed about his time in ANBU some nights. At first they were the standard bad memories relived. His brain felt no need to embellish the horror. But then the dreams changed. He would enter a village, mask on, sword in hand, and cut people down with his lethal efficiency. Only once he stopped to examine the bodies did he see the pink hair. Everywhere he looked, slaughtered Sakuras fell and died around him like her blossom namesake. Then, just before the adrenaline rush woke him up, they all turned to look at him with an expression that could only be described as disgust.

Sakura shifted in her sleep, and Kakashi watched her in the gloom. He had put off telling her because he knew what she would say. If she loved him (and he still shamefully hoped she did), she would laugh at his fears. "Is that all? Oh Kakashi, I _know_ you're a _good_ person." And he would be tempted to laugh too, to agree, to forget. "The past is behind." _But you weren't there. You didn't see._

He was tempted to just stand watch the rest of the night, and not wake Sakura for her shift. But he could already picture the reproachful look she would give him in the morning. She would take it as some comment on her competence. And so when it was time he bent down toward Sakura and dutifully nudged her shoulder.

After a moment her eyes opened and she smiled sleepily. He wondered if he had roused her from a pleasant dream.

"Your turn," he whispered, and she pulled herself up off the ground. He lay down on her bedroll, still lightly perfumed by her Floral Green shampoo (he only knew its name because it was the same one he used on Pakkun, and it always made him feel at ease). He pushed all thoughts from his head and forced himself to give in to at least a few hours of pure, contented sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

The next morning, Kakashi and Sai woke automatically due to their training, and Sai reached over to wake Bunta. After packing up camp they returned to the road. While continuing their journey to Sound, they ate a breakfast of rice balls and talked about Reed Village.

"It's a real treasure," Bunta told them through a mouthful of rice. "Don't get me wrong, it's nowhere near as big or fancy as your Konoha, but the people have lived there for generations, and that makes a community pretty close-knit."

"How long have the bandits been terrorising you?" Sai asked.

"It's been on and off ever since that bastard Orochimaru disappeared, and left behind whatever's hidden in the mountain. Mostly they know well enough to keep to themselves, but lately they've been getting bolder about entering our territory. Seeing them enter the forbidden caves was the last straw."

"So the bandits are connected to Orochimaru?"

Bunta spat. "He's the one who unleashed this scourge on us in the first place. Without him, Reed would be safe and free of the sword hanging over our heads."

Sakura and Kakashi glanced at each other. The bandits sounded like a pretty serious threat; but they had been employed to take out the lab, not the cut-throats hiding in the mountains. Unless they tried to interfere with their mission, they probably wouldn't even see them. But Sakura knew Kakashi had a soft spot for people in trouble. If they ended up sticking around to help the villagers with their bandit problem, it wouldn't be the first time.

They reached the village around midday, with no troubles along the way. As they arrived Bunta, who had thus far been a merely cheerful, now seemed almost bursting with joy. The village was ringed with a crude fence of grasses, plus a low gate made of sticks. It wouldn't have done much to deter a wild boar, let alone a group of bandits, but Bunta pointed out several masks painted in a grotesque fashion that peppered the fence.

"They keep us safe," Bunta said, patting one fondly as the lone guard waved them through.

"They look like ANBU masks," Sakura whispered, eyeing a red and white one with painted fangs.

The village inside was sparsely populated, and the buildings all looked as flimsy as the fence.

"Tsunade should have sent Yamato," Sakura whispered. "He could have built them all wooden houses in a day."

"I doubt Yamato would be very popular in a village like this, where Orochimaru's impact still lingers," Kakashi replied. "Besides, it would be rude to come in and change their way of life just because it's a little…rudimentary."

"Fine, but if one of us needs healing, leave it to me. Grass huts don't make for very sanitary hospitals."

"Noted."

Bunta took them to his own house, one of the larger ones in the community. "It's because I have the most children," he explained, as his daughter and two sons chased each other around his legs. They had all been introduced, but Kakashi feared their names were already jumbled in his memory.

Bunta's wife Kayo greeted them warmly and thanked them for coming. "You must all be tired after your journey. I'll make you some tea." She put a pot of water on a fire sunk into the hut's dirt floor.

There was nothing in the hut, nothing in the entire village, that was more advanced than a hand-held can opener. After tea and a lunch of vegetable soup, Bunta and Kayo took them on "the grand tour" of Reed. They saw the fields (hand-tilled) where the villagers grew enough produce to feed themselves each season. There were a handful of sheep with bells around their necks, to make sure they never wandered too far. Aside from the huts of the other villagers, that was all there was to see. The villagers themselves gawked at the trio of shinobi and asked them all kinds of questions about Konoha.

"Is it true they stack the buildings on top of one another so they reach up to the sky?" a shepherd boy asked.

"I saw them myself! Almost as big as the mountain, but crammed full of people like an ant's nest," Bunta gestured with his hands and the boy eye's widened with awe.

A younger girl reached out and tugged at the hem of Sakura's red shirt. "Pretty," she said.

"Oh, thank you," Sakura replied, stopping to kneel down to the girl's level.

Kakashi noticed that most of the village was either grass green or the creamy brown of undyed wool. Sakura stood out like a wildflower on a rock.

The little girl tugged Sakura's hair and the kunoichi yelped. "Pretty," the little girl explained, before running back to her mortified mother.

Sakura laughed to show she was unhurt, and Kakashi offered her a hand back up.

"Mingling with the locals?"

"Apparently I'm 'pretty.'"

Kakashi mumbled something under his breath.

"Pardon?"

"Nothing."

The trio agreed they felt rested enough to tackle the abandoned lab that day, and left while they could make the most of the light. They each carried an oil lantern from the village to help them see in the caves, and for picking their way back down the mountain in the evening. They originally planned to carry the electric flashlights they had brought with them from Konoha, but when they pulled them out of their packs the villagers whispered fearfully to one another until Bunta begged them to leave such things behind.

"Weird place," Sai mused to himself once they were out of earshot of the last few villagers who had been brave enough to escort them partway up the mountain. "It's totally primitive, despite being so close to one of Orochimaru's labs. Those are advanced even by today's standards. You'd think most of them would have seen things far more impressive than a flashlight in their lifetimes."

"Perhaps that's exactly why they're so scared of technology," Kakashi replied. "Because they associate it with Orochimaru."

Sakura pretended to shudder. "I can see how that would turn a person off the idea of electricity. Even if electricity means warm showers and food that doesn't taste like ash."

"Barely two days into the mission and you're already missing your creature comforts," Sai teased. "Peace time has made you soft, Sakura-san."

Sakura reached out to shove him playfully but the boy dodged and ran on ahead. She fell back into step with Kakashi, who seemed too distracted to pay much attention to their banter. He kept glancing around him, brow creased in frustration.

"What's up?"

"Huh? Oh, I thought I could hear something. Or sense something. Not sure if it's real or just paranoia though."

"One man's paranoia is another man's intuition," Sakura smiled, but Kakashi didn't return it.

"It's probably nothing. I'm just getting used to being back on active duty. Even if it's only a C-rank mission."

He fell back into distracted silence and something told Sakura not to break it. He seemed unable or unwilling to look at her directly, more like her old antisocial sensei and less like the close friend he'd become lately.

They reached the narrow mouth of the cave about two-thirds of the way up the mountain. Only a few steps in, the darkness was absolute and they were forced to light their lanterns. They were alert for any signs of booby-trapping but for the most part the cave was unnaturally clean, as though Orochimaru had only just left it.

"Perhaps the bandits cleaned up on their way out," Sai speculated. "I'll wager the tunnel splits at least a few times on the way to the lab, and they wouldn't want their tracks to make our job too easy."

As if on cue, they rounded a corner and were faced with two diverging paths.

This was the opportunity Kakashi had been hoping for. "Sai, you take the left. Sakura and I will go right. Try not to get lost. If you find the lab, double back and call for help."

Sai nodded and his lantern disappeared around another bend within moments.

Sakura nudged Kakashi with her elbow. "Just you and me, then."

They headed down the right path, and Kakashi tried to think of an appropriate way to begin. _Actually Sakura, there's something I wanted to tell you. While we're alone, I thought I'd take the opportunity to talk to you. Thing is, Sakura, there's something I need to get off my chest and if I don't do it now I probably never will because I'm surprisingly cowardly when it comes to this sort of thing…_

"Kakashi, can I ask you something?"

 _There goes that idea._ "Sure. What's up?"

"Is there something preventing us from getting closer than we are?"

The tunnel was too narrow to walk side by side, so all Kakashi could see of Sakura was her dim silhouette as she continued to walk forward like nothing had been said. Kakashi on the other hand felt like he needed to sit down.

"Sakura, I-"

"Don't get me wrong, I really value our friendship. But I can't help but think that 'friends' isn't all were meant to be."

"I value it too," Kakashi began after a short pause, "but I think…I think you've misunderstood my feelings for you."

She stopped, and Kakashi almost ran into her.

"Really?" she turned back to him, and even in the dim light he could tell she was sceptical. "After all this time together you've never even thought about getting together?"

"Never."

 _Liar,_ his subconscious whispered, and he could see the word reflected in Sakura's lantern-lit eyes. They watched him from the gloom, but he stared back unfalteringly.

"I'm sorry Sakura, I just don't see you that way. Even if I did, I don't think we'd be right for one another."

He had wanted to confront her about it on his terms, shut the idea down before it was ever voiced aloud. It seemed cruel to have to reject her in this way, especially when the truth was that her confession still swirled around his head, making him feel equal parts elation and terror.

"Not right for one another," Sakura repeated his words slowly. "Well Kakashi, I respectfully disagree."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I think you're wrong." She turned back and kept walking down the tunnel, her steps so brisk he struggled to catch up.

"Sakura…"

"Relax, I won't push it. I promised myself I'd never waste time running after another boy who wasn't running toward me. So maybe you'll meet me halfway, or at least be straight about your real feelings, or maybe you won't. Either way," and as she spoke, they rounded a corner and came upon another fork in the path, "the ball's in your court now. See you later, Kakashi."

She started down the right-hand tunnel, and as Kakashi watched her little lantern get swallowed by the darkness, he felt an uncharacteristic stab of anxiety.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: I edited a one or two parts in this chapter about the sharingan, because this is set after the events of the war and I forgot Kakashi wouldn't have it anymore.**

Her face was still burning from the embarrassment.

Her disbelief about Kakashi's apparent lack of attraction toward her was real. She could feel it sometimes, when he looked at her or touched her hand. She knew he was lying when he claimed he'd never even thought about it.

But his rejection still hurt. In the end, even if he did feel the same way about her as she did for him, it would be nothing but heartache if he refused to admit to it. She hadn't been lying about refusing to chase people that didn't want her back.

She grimaced in the dark. Maybe he liked her, but not enough to do anything about it. Perhaps for him it was just a passing fancy, the kind of thought that occurs to everyone about their close friends at some point. Perhaps she wanted his glances and touches to mean more because they meant more to her. Because she loved Kakashi. She realised it was love about two steps down this part of the cave system, alone in the dark with the lingering memory of his words: 'I don't think we'd be right for one another.' How could words spoken so softly sting so much if not for love?

"I love you," she whispered into the void. The void did not respond, but that was preferable to rejection. She wondered if she would ever have the opportunity to tell Kakashi she actually loved him, now that the ball was in his court and might stay there indefinitely.

The tunnel gently rounded to the right, before widening and straightening so much that the walls were too far away to see with her lamp. In fact, she didn't realise she had walked right into a cavernous room until some sort of sensor tripped and a set of artificial lights flickered on.

The sudden brilliance dazzled her. Setting down her now pointless lamp, she tried to get her bearings. The room was colossally big, and crammed from wall to wall with technical equipment ranging from small appliances to horse-sized gizmos with no discernible purpose. After spending time in the technologically-challenged Reed Village, the effect was startling. The only thing Sakura noticed that wasn't technologically advanced were a series of human-sized cages set into the far wall.

Before Sakura could assess the room beyond that, one of the gadgets nearby clicked to life and assessed her first. The scanner flickered up and down her body twice, then made a noise like a hum of disapproval.

" _Shit."_

All the lights in the room began to flash red, making the lab equipment look bloodstained and eerie. She expected some sort of alarm noise to go off too, but the only new sound was a series of clicks and whirs that was honestly more disconcerting.

She rotated slowly on the spot, searching for signs of an enemy amongst the piles of metal.

She hadn't suspected the metal itself.

Kakashi felt a rumble through the wall of rock on his right. Whatever had caused it was big, and showed no sign of ending soon. He wasn't sure about any other details, but clearly the source of the rumbling was Sakura's tunnel, and that was enough for his feet to turn him around and sprint back the way he had come. By the time he reached the intersection the rumbling had intensified, mixed with something more metallic, like the sound of a thousand swords unsheathing at once. The din grew so loud as he raced toward it that it almost drowned out the sound of screaming.

The creatures that scuttled toward Sakura were spider-like and made entirely from metal. There were too many to count, but the swarm was big enough to pose a very real threat, even to a kunoichi like Sakura. Each robot was about the size of a hunched-over human, with simplistic metal bodies and eight sharp-looking legs. As the first wave reached her, she landed a hit on the nearest bot and sent it flying backward in a dozen pieces. This was comforting; they weren't too hard to kill. But for every bot she smashed three more took its place.

She felt something crawling up her back and shrieked, lurching forward in an attempt to dislodge the thing. She caught hold of a leg and swung it away from her and into an advancing cluster of bots. But she could felt the wet pang of blood on her back, and hear the clank of more bots in her blind spot. They would wear her down before she even made a dent in their numbers.

"Sakura!"

Sakura couldn't afford to lose focus at the sound of Kakashi's voice, but an ally made the odds feel a little less impossible. She could feel the tide of spider-bots waning slightly as they shared their attention between both shinobi. Her fists cut a swathe through the chaos as she tried to get through to Kakashi. From what she could tell he was doing much the same thing. He was driving the bots back as best he could, but Sakura could tell he was holding back for the sake of safety. This far underground in a confined space, their combat options were very limited.

She felt rather than saw where Kakashi stood, and was confident she was getting close. They needed to be able to work together, to defend each other's blind spots and hope that Sai was on the way with a miracle. Another spider-bot latched onto her back and she flung it into the far wall. It smashed against a bank of electronic equipment which sputtered and smoked. The rumbling of the cave was starting to feel like a roar, but she pushed the fear of a cave-in from her mind and tried to focus on the more immediate threat.

Kakashi had jumped into the fray without thinking. Granted, the bots swarming Sakura wouldn't have waited for him to formulate a plan before killing her, but it still left him feeling unprepared and overwhelmed. There were simply too many robots for any two shinobi to destroy.

Lightning-based jutsu would have been too effective, and electrocuted Sakura along with the bots. Taijutsu was making a small dent, but he was wary of trying anything too dramatic when the cave was already unsteady. Dust and rocks were starting to shower from the ceiling, and the floor was wracked with tremors that had nothing to with the battle taking place.

A larger rock fell toward him with deadly speed, and while he dodged it in time, it temporarily cost him his focus. Two spider-bots took this opportunity to leap at him from either side, and the razor legs reaching for him were too numerous to totally block. One sword-like leg reached under his arms while he was occupied with keeping the other bot at bay, and for a moment the sensation of metal slowly tugging along his abdomen came to him with perfect clarity before the pain arrived and blurred everything to red.

"Kakashi!"

Sakura saw him go down, and in that moment all thoughts of tactic left her mind. As a medic, it was her job to die last on any battlefield. She was meant to think of self-preservation first, and helping her comrades second. But now she was running to where she'd last seen Kakashi with very little thought of the twenty or so bots that stood in her way. She ploughed through them, and even though they tried to grab at her legs and drag her down, she was moving too quickly for them to get purchase.

The cave was breaking up. At first she had thought the ceiling would fall down in one big slab and crush them all, but now Sakura suspected the problem came from below. The ground beneath her feet was cracking and splintering at an alarming rate, forcing her to swerve back and forth with the movement. As long as she could get to Kakashi, they could make a dash for the tunnel and hope the ground was more stable there.

The bots seemed less aggressive now that their home was collapsing. They swarmed uncertain and unfocused, trying to dodge the chunks of rock falling from above and the chasm that was tearing the cave floor in half. Sakura could feel the ground dipping sideways toward the gap, but couldn't spare a glance to see how deep the hole might get.

A shock of silver hair appeared from under two spider bots scrabbling for purchase on the uneven ground. Kakashi tried to rise to his knees, but seemed to be struggling. There was rubble all around his feet and as Sakura got closer her nose filled with the unmistakeable scent of fresh blood. She dove for him just as the rock floor gave out completely and lurched into the chasm.

"Kakashi!"

Everything was sliding away into the darkness opening up to their right. Bots were tumbling out of sight by the dozen, and Sakura tried not to get dragged down along with them. Kakashi was close enough to the edge of the chasm that he wasn't yet in danger of sliding in, but she was fighting against gravity as she crawled the last few feet to get to him.

"Sakura!" Kakashi thrust his hand out toward her, and she reached for it with her right hand as the other clung to the almost-vertical rock shelf for dear life.

"I can't reach." Sakura's fingers just barely brushed Kakashi's, and with mere moments before her piece of the floor tore away from his, she wasn't sure she would make it in time.

But her lifeline was about to break even sooner than that. The only warning Sakura got about the danger she was in was the low rushing sound of a large boulder's descent. It tumbled through the air toward her, but if she released her hold on the ground she would slide into the chasm. There was no time to think and no chance to dodge.

Kakashi realised Sakura's fate in the same moment she did, and even though his legs were trapped under the rubble of lab equipment and lifeless bots, he dragged himself forward and launched himself over the rock edge toward Sakura. He grabbed her right hand and yanked her to the side just as the boulder hit her left shoulder. She screamed with pain as her left arm broke and fell uselessly to her side. The whole shelf of rock was jangled loose from the impact and dropped out from under them as they tumbled briefly into free-fall.

Their hands remained tightly locked together as they braced for the unknown, but their fall was cut short almost as soon as it began. A snarl of cables around Kakashi's ankle snapped tight and held them, swinging, only a few feet into the abyss.

"Thank Kami," Sakura sighed, gazing down into the black void beyond her toes. "If it holds, we can wait like this until Sai arrives."

Kakashi didn't reply. Sakura raised her head, and something wet splattered against her cheek. Between the cables tethering Kakashi to the cliff edge and Sakura's dead weight dragging him down, the stress on his body was enormous. He was stretched out like a tortured man, hanging upside down so the blood rushed to his head. At least it would have rushed to his head if it weren't all running out of the wound in his abdomen. It gaped, red and ugly, across his belly; and though Sakura could tell it had missed his organs, the blood loss from such a state would be too much for Kakashi to bear for long. He was dying, and Sakura was the one killing him.

"Kakashi," she whispered in horror, and his eyes fluttered open.

"It's okay," he said, his voice hoarse. "It's okay."

"It's not okay! You can't keep dangling like that and I can't pull myself up." She nodded her head toward her broken left arm, which still hung impotent and motionless.

"It's okay," Kakashi repeated, and Sakura began to suspect he was in shock.

"Kakashi, listen to me. You'll die if you keep holding on."

"You'll die if I let go." His voice was quiet but his eyes were unclouded as they stared into hers. "I can't let you die when I might have saved you."

Sakura could feel tears mingling with the blood on her face. "What about me? I could save you too. You could pull yourself up."

Kakashi shook his head, and they both swayed gently with the movement. "Sakura, I couldn't live with myself if I let go."

 _Oh Kami, this is goodbye isn't it._ The realisation gave Sakura more pain than her broken arm or the hundred other cuts and bruises she had recently sustained.

"I can't just hang here and watch you die! I can't hold your hand while I slowly kill you."

Kakashi watched her, his beautiful bloodstained Sakura. Sakura who would rather take a thousand hits than see a friend hurt once. Sakura whose expression terrified him, because it was the same expression he had worn when he'd first told Team Seven he wouldn't allow them to die as long as he was alive.

As he watched her she smiled at him. "You don't have to be the one who lets go," she said. "Goodbye, Kakashi."

And before Kakashi could say anything, Sakura flexed her fingers and broke his grip on her hand. She dropped away from him, swallowed by the abyss in a heartbeat. Her last smile still burned in his vision and he squeezed his eyes shut against the darkness that replaced it.


	5. Chapter 5

Kakashi awoke in the village. It was dark but for a small lantern near his head, and the details of how he'd gotten there were hazy. He tried to sit up, but his torso flared with pain. He could feel a new bandage wrapped around it. Sakura must have healed him.

"You're awake," Sai appeared in the doorway. He looked dusty and dishevelled, not at all like his usual unflappable self. He slowly approached the mat where Kakashi lay, and when he knelt down Kakashi could see by the lantern light that he had been crying.

"Sakura…" Kakashi murmured. "She fell." The memory had suddenly resurfaced from whatever quiet corner it had been waiting in.

Sai nodded, his expression so grief-stricken it was almost unrecognisable. "You told me that just before you passed out, remember?"

"No," Kakashi replied honestly.

"That's understandable. I found you by the side of the pit. You said you'd pulled yourself up, but that Sakura hadn't…That Sakura was…"

"She's dead, isn't she?" Kakashi surprised himself with how flat his voice sounded.

Sai bowed his head. "Probably. You saw how deep that hole seemed to go. I wanted to check properly; maybe recover her body. But at that point the cave was too unstable and you didn't look like you had any time to waste."

The thought of Sakura's lifeless body lying at the bottom of a dark hole sent a tremor of emotion through Kakashi. His thoughts still felt sluggish and his heart was still numb with shock. But the comforting haze of denial was beginning to lift, and in its absence Kakashi was beginning to feel the old wounds of grief laid bare once more.

Sai seemed to understand the change. He stood up, saying he would come back later when the village healer refreshed the bandages.

Kakashi shuddered like a freezing man. And perhaps freezing wouldn't be so bad; it was cowardly, but the future suddenly scared him. The worst part about losing someone was the knowledge that they would stay lost. He was scared to think about going home to Konoha with one less comrade, sitting through one more memorial service, visiting a new grave, making new memories that didn't involve a girl with pink hair. He dreaded every moment that would take him further from Sakura as a living person and closer to Sakura as a name carved on a rock.

He slept fitfully. He was still physically exhausted but every time he closed his eyes the darkness transported him back to the caves. He dreamed he lay somewhere close to Sakura, but couldn't find her body when he reached out. The shadows refused to give her up.

The village healer was more of a wise woman than a medic. She had no chakra and very few instruments to work with. Kakashi sat up and passively allowed her to change his bandages. The fabric tugged away from the dried blood of his wound, and Kakashi couldn't help but think of Sakura's gentle hands. Even when her chakra reserves were low, she always put a little of her power into dulling his pain. Kakashi always complained, telling her such care was wasted on him and she should just get on with it. That only made her fuss more.

One time when he was recovering from a particularly brutal overexertion of his sharingan, he had snapped at her. Though he immediately regretted it, Sakura barely flinched. She just continued to bandage him in silence, and when she was done she used the 'healing magic' she usually reserved for children. Kakashi had felt properly chastened by the two pink lips left over his bandaged eye, and even though he hid it under his forehead protector he would think about it every now and then with a strange fondness.

With a final tug, the village healer left him with fresh, unmarked wrappings. He looked down at the undyed cotton and realised he felt nothing at all. It were as though a stream had become so clogged by debris that water could no longer flow freely. The healer left in silence, and was quickly replaced by Sai.

"Do you feel up to walking?" he asked, and Kakashi nodded. Sai offered a hand to help him up, but Kakashi managed without him. After seeing to the needs of his bladder he followed Sai out of the hut. It was still darkest night, but all the villagers who should have been fast asleep were standing outside their homes. Every one of them hid their face under the masks that usually ringed the village fence, and each held a paper lantern that glowed with soft, warm light. Kakashi leaned against the side of the healing hut and watched as the masked people silently raised their lanterns and released them into the sky.

"It's for Sakura," Sai whispered to Kakashi. "Bunta told me."

The golden paper lights floated up into the darkness, slowly drifting apart from one another to follow their own course. The villagers watched reverently, their masks looking eerie in the shifting light. Even the children wore one.

 _They really do look like ANBU masks_ , Kakashi thought to himself. The masks and lanterns were visually impactful, and he was sure Sakura would have been very touched by the memorial. Even Sai looked moved. But Kakashi still felt numb. In fact, watching the masks in the darkness he felt more and more like the version of himself that was tied to the tattoo on his left bicep. ANBU Kakashi had no attachments, nothing that would hold him back or cause him pain.

The lanterns shrunk rapidly in the darkness, and the masked villagers began slowly to return to their homes. One masked figure left the crowd to approach Kakashi and Sai. Kakashi could tell even before he removed his mask that it was Bunta. The man's face was tear-streaked and uncharacteristically sombre.

"My friends," he said, "Our village mourns with you. What a terrible price to pay for people you've only just met."

"Sakura was a natural medic," Sai replied. "She cared about protecting everyone, even those she had only just met."

 _And she died for it,_ Kakashi thought. _Caring about this random village, caring about me…all it brought her was death._

Bunta grasped Sai's arm, but something made him hesitate before doing the same to Kakashi. He settled for a sympathetic nod. "While you recover both physically and emotionally, please don't hesitate to ask for anything you may require. As you have seen, we don't have much; but it is yours if you want it."

Sai gave some kind of thanks, and Kakashi turned to go back inside. He was tired. Grief was an exhausting emotion, yet everybody seemed to be pushing it on him. He laid back down on his mat and closed his eyes.

Grief was part of the reason he had started wearing a mask. He suspected it was the same reason the villagers used the masks in their mourning ritual. Nobody asked what a masked man felt; that would defeat the purpose. After his father died, he found it was easier to face the world if there was always a barrier between him and the world's stares. It was part of the allure of ANBU, too; a masked man has no identity, no past or future. If you don't have a past then you can't be hurt by the memory of your loved ones. If you don't have a future then you can't fear death taking it away.

Perhaps it wasn't a healthy way to live, but such considerations were also meaningless once you put on the mask. As Kakashi he would die slowly, tortured by the memories of everyone who was buried with a piece of his heart in their hands. As a faceless nobody his death would be swift and blissfully meaningless.


	6. Chapter 6

When she had said her final goodbye and dropped to her inevitable death, it had taken every shred of Sakura's will to stop herself from screaming. Her broken arm fluttered like a doll's and she could feel the bone pieces grating against one another. The air whipped at her mouth as if to punish her for her silence, but it sickened her to think of Kakashi hearing her screams of terror and pain, and the exact moment that they were forever silenced.

She tried to brace herself for impact, as though the drop were only as far as a tree branch to the ground and if she landed correctly, she wouldn't be hurt. She found this easier than dwelling on the moment the invisible ground finally did appear. Would it hurt? The longer she fell the more she suspected her death would be instantaneous. This thought wasn't as comforting as she had hoped.

Then her feet hit something harder than air and she almost passed out from the shock of actually feeling the impact. She didn't want to live this part. But either she had indeed died on impact and this was hell, or she was still alive.

The brutal sensation of impact finally gave way to other sensations and she found that she could feel both cold and wet as well as pain. She realised she wasn't dying, but sinking; there must have been a river at the bottom of the crevasse. In a moment she was completely submerged in the water and still plunging deeper, propelled by her killer velocity.

 _I may still die,_ she thought helplessly as she tried to struggle back toward the surface. There was no breath left in her lungs, and the current was pulling her in chaotic loops through the water. Between this disorienting pull and the total blackness of the cavern, she wasn't sure which way the surface was anymore. Even if she did, her body was too weak to fight the forces acting against it. Her broken arm was twisted so violently by the torrid waters that she screamed involuntarily and choked on a mouthful of water.

She could feel herself panicking, and knew she would have to rein it in if she actually wanted to see the sky again. Closing her eyes and focusing on a deep part of her that was untouched by cold or pain or despair, she reached out with her good hand to grab the other. Clumsily, she managed to form a seal.

A burst of healing chakra flooded her system. It didn't do anything for her broken arm or drowning lungs, but it gave her enough distance from the pain to actually move. Using her spark of chakra like a torch, she kicked furiously forward toward the surface. Her head broke through the water and she sucked in desperate gulps of air, aware that the water could still drag her back down. She held her broken arm against her chest to protect it from further jostling, but her legs were relatively uninjured and by treading water she was able to fight the raging current and stay upright.

Eventually it subsided to a gentler flow. She allowed herself to relax slightly, floating along on her back like an otter. The cave roof above seemed to glisten with river spray, but she realised after a while that it was actually the stars. As hoped, the river had led her out of the mountain.

Ignoring her protesting body, she straightened back up and kicked clumsily to the nearest bank. It seemed to take hours just to drag herself out of the water. She had to use her good arm to do it, so the other swung sickeningly in its socket.

"Soon," she told it, her voice sounding hoarse and papery. When she had cleared the bank and stumbled a few more feet toward the softer grass, she lay back down and looked at the stars again. Now that the immediate danger was over, she was just about ready to pass out. But she forced herself to deal with her broken arm first. If it set badly, or if she rolled over on it, she'd regret it.

The green light of her chakra warmed and soothed her bedraggled body. She was soaking wet but even though she could feel herself shivering, she couldn't bring herself to care. She was alive. She was more or less in one piece. The stars were beautiful.

They found her in the night, an unconscious woman lying beside the river in a puddle of water. At first they thought she was dead; certainly she was unconscious. When they shined their flashlights at her, she didn't even stir. Her clothes labelled her as a ninja, so presumably she'd have reacted to their presence if she could. Eventually a few of the braver souls got close enough to check her pulse. She was alive, but between her many injuries and the hypothermia she must be battling, her body seemed to have shut down for repairs.

They whispered among themselves. Was she the one who had killed Orochimaru's machines? She had probably been hired by the Reed Village. That posed a problem, but if they left her behind there was no guarantee that Reed would find her this high up the mountain, where they were afraid to go _(thank Kami)._

"Radio back to the base. We're bringing her home with us." A tall woman stepped forward. She carried a pair of metal rods wrapped in canvas. Kneeling down and unrolling them, the canvas and rods formed a basic stretcher. The woman stood back up and gestured to two men. "Alright, be careful with her. Has anyone got a blanket we can wrap her in?"

"Yumi, are you sure this is wise?" An equally tall man with a very tan face spoke up.

"We can't just leave her out here, Kazuro."

"But taking her back to camp? She's a ninja. There's no guarantee how she'll react when she wakes up in a strange place full of strange people. And if someone comes looking for her…"

Yumi placed a hand on Kazuro's shoulder. Even as they debated this, the others were following out Yumi's instructions and bundling the girl on the stretcher.

"You saw the lanterns. For all we know they were for her and the village has given her up for dead. Anyway, if she came from the mountain then it's our fault she's injured. Kami knows what Reed has been telling the ninjas about us, but I can tell you it's no coincidence she destroyed the lab so soon after we went up there to booby-trap it. At least this way we might have a chance to tell our side of the story."

The pink-haired ninja was hoisted between two of the stronger men, and Kazuro watched as Yumi tucked the blanket deeper around the girl's shoulders. Completely fearless. That was why she was their leader, because only she would see this as an opportunity to be taken and not a threat to be avoided. He hoped she was right, but part of him remained wary of this dangerous newcomer. No doubt the Reed village had told her a story of their own, one which painted Kazuro and his friends as the villains.


	7. Chapter 7

Kakashi woke to Sai gently nudging him awake. It was mid-morning judging by the light shining in through the hut window.

"What is it?" It seemed very unkind of Sai to deny him good sleep, when his body craved its restoration and his mind craved its emptiness.

"I came to let you know that I'm heading back to Konoha soon."

"Back to Konoha?"

Sai nodded. "You've improved a bit, but you need a proper healer before you're able to make the journey yourself. If I go, I can bring back a medic for you. And a recovery team."

Kakashi sat up slowly, tucking the blanket back around his lower half. "I suppose I'll just have to be patient until you return."

"It should only take a few days to get there and back. In the meantime, the village will take good care of you."

 _Please don't hesitate to ask for anything you may require._

"They'll make sure you're comfortable."

 _We don't have much; but it is yours if you want it._

"Try not to do anything too strenuous. The cut's healing but you lost a lot of blood. Just…rest."

"Rest," Kakashi echoed.

Sakura woke to the smell of cooked rice. It took several moments of peacefully inhaling the delicious scent before she realised she wasn't at home in her apartment. Her eyes flew open and she struggled to sit up and make sense of her surroundings as soon as possible. She was in a canvas tent. Someone had put a thick blanket over her. Whoever they were, they had also removed her damp clothes and replaced them with a simple green slip. Her left arm still ached, but after examining it for a few minutes, she decided it had set well enough last night and was on the mend.

Despite the obvious hospitality she had been shown, she was still wary of deception and ambush. She stealthily pulled back the flap of her tent to investigate her rescuers (captors?) before they realised she was awake.

She could tell at once that they were still on the mountain. The trees pressed close and dense against the edges of the campsite. There were several more tents that she could see. Some were small and simple like hers, but many were large, more like buildings with canvas walls than actual tents. It reminded her of a battlefield medical unit.

The smell of food was coming from a larger central tent that Sakura would have guessed to be this settlement's communal mess hall. She couldn't see anyone else outside, and assumed they were all in there. Slowly exiting her own tent and drawing closer, the sounds of human activity increased. At a guess, she would say there was about twenty people inside. The size of a squad of soldiers. But then a baby's wail started up, coming from one of the farther tents. Perhaps this outfit wasn't military after all. Reed Village had spoken of bandits up in the mountains, but bandits weren't always hardened soldiers. Occasionally it was a whole community of men, women and children that roamed an area, with only a fraction of them doing the actual banditry.

Somebody exited the mess hall, and Sakura drew back behind another of the larger tents. Peering out, she spied a tall woman with auburn hair heading in her direction. Wishing she knew where her clothes and weapons were, she crouched in her hiding place and weighed her options. She could flee into the trees, get a good head start and try to find her way back to Reed Village and her comrades. But even though this was probably the most logical option, part of her didn't want to leave before finding out who these people were, and why they had looked after her. She decided to wait until the woman was closer and then confront her; non-physically if possible, but if Sakura had misread this community's intentions she felt strong enough to fight them off.

"Yo," she said as the woman passed by her hiding place. They froze, turning slowly on the spot to face Sakura.

Sakura stood calmly, alert for any signs of commotion at her back. "Who are you and what do you want?"

"You're awake," the woman said, appraising Sakura's injuries with equal calm. "I was starting to think we'd found you too late to save you."

Sakura shifted impatiently. "Again, who are you and what do you want?"

The tall woman met her eyes, and for the first time Sakura realised that the whites of them were silver. She tried to remain neutral but the woman seemed to guess her thoughts anyway.

"My name is Yumi, and these," she gestured to her strange eyes, "are part of the reason you're here. We have no intention of hurting you, kunoichi. We want nothing more than to explain who we are and what we want. But it's a long story."

The mess tent was emptied out to make a space where they could talk. People glanced at Sakura as they passed, with everything from curiosity to fear on their faces. Sakura could tell that Yumi's calm was preventing those people from panicking outright. As the community paraded out of the tent to continue their morning's business, it became clear that there were far more children than expected. More than half of the people were Sakura's age or younger, and few of them looked like bandits. The only thing they all had in common was the silver in their eyes.

"What's going on here?" Sakura wondered aloud as a woman clutched a silver-eyed baby closer to her chest and hurried away.

Yumi stood at the tent flap and waved her in. "This ok?" she asked. Inside, a handful of people remained. A couple of them were dressed like Yumi, in practical gear not unlike a ninja's. They eyed Sakura with unreadable expressions, but she got the feeling they were there to defend Yumi in case Sakura attacked, and wouldn't harm her without good reason. There was also a timid-looking cook and an elderly woman in a pale robe. Sakura nodded to show she was okay with this arrangement.

Yumi took a seat at a central table, and after a moment Sakura followed. The cook came forward with a platter of food, placing it at the very edge of the table and quickly retreating behind a burlier man.

"Thank you," Sakura said, dragging the platter closer with her right hand. The food smelled divine in her current state, and she wasted no time in digging in.

"I thought I was going to have to taste-test it for you or something," Yumi said, watching her eat.

Sakura grunted through a mouthful of food. "If you wanted me dead, you had better opportunities than this."

The old woman smiled, and Yumi waved her over.

"This is Michiko, our medic. If you like, she can take another look at your injuries."

Sakura could tell their 'medic' was little better than the healers back at Reed Village, but she nodded and allowed to woman to examine her left arm.

"Now," she said, ignoring the little shoots of pain even the woman's gentlest ministrations provoked, "Talk."

Yumi began. "I'm not sure what the Reed Village told you, but it's a lie."

"They said you're a group of bandits that have been terrorising them, and that you entered the mountain to do something with Orochimaru's lab."

At the mention of Orochimaru, the others in the tent flinched or hissed in disgust. Even Yumi closed her eyes briefly. But when she continued, her voice was untroubled.

"We aren't bandits, and we have no interest in causing trouble with Reed. It's true that we entered the mountain caves, but our motives weren't as sinister as you might believe."

"Oh?"

"These eyes of ours," she gestured to her face, "mark us as different, but we aren't ninjas and we weren't born like this. This was done _to_ us, by Orochimaru." Another collective flinch.

"Orochimaru hasn't been in this area for several years."

"Thank Kami for that. But his original experimentations on our community have left their influence on our genetics. Some of us weren't even alive when Orochimaru was terrorising our village, but one child in ten still inherits his 'gift.'" One of the taller men spat on the dirt floor of the tent, earning a disapproving look from the cook.

"Tell me more about what he did to you," Sakura said, wincing as the healer began to bind her arm around a splint. The arm was still severely fractured, but Sakura wanted to conserve her chakra for now.

"I won't go into the details, but the village was utterly helpless, and he took as many of us as he wanted back to his base in the mountain. We were experimented on. Those of us who survived don't like to talk about it much. We gather he was trying to splice something into our genes, a kind of artificial bloodline limit that would turn us into soldiers. And it worked, in a manner of speaking. We discovered…abilities. Our eyes began to turn silver, but that was just the surface effect. Mechanical things began to speak to us, and we found we could speak back."

Sakura had finished her meal, and was staring at Yumi with a mixture of sympathy, horror and fascination. "You could speak to machines?"

Yumi nodded gravely. "We still can, in fact. Orochimaru thought it would be useful to create humans who could 'interface' with technology, work with it in battle. At the same time that he was creating us, he worked on robotic weapons like nothing we had ever seen before. They were massive, and utterly deadly."

"I think I saw them."

"I suspected as much. We were meant to work symbiotically, part of a matching set of machine-like humans and human-like machines. But try as Orochimaru might, he could never remove the part of our humanity that wished to be free."

"You defied him," Sakura guessed. "You refused to fight."

Yumi nodded. "We were never soldiers, and nothing Orochimaru did could change that. The robots were designed to interface with us, so they never worked properly either. One day, for whatever reason, Orochimaru just gave up. The lab went dark, and we knew he'd simply left us to die."

"But we didn't," one of the other women spoke up. The others nodded fiercely.

"But we didn't," Yumi echoed. We lived. We escaped our cages and made our way back down the mountain. Back home, to Reed Village."

"Reed Village was your home?"

" _Was._ We reunited with our loved ones who had been spared, and continued our lives as best we could. But our abilities were hard to control, and scared our friends and family. We tried everything to just forget ourselves and be 'normal.' Reed removed almost all of its technology, anything that touched our minds and sparked our abilities. We were all living like savages. They still do."

Sakura remembered the basic ways of the Reed Village, a place that had seemed too large for such a small population.

"In the end, it wasn't enough. Our eyes still marked us as different, and at night we could hear the mountain crying."

"Crying? You don't mean…"

"The robots left behind, designed to be our ultimate allies in some future war, were calling out to us. We were their other half, and we could still feel them in our heads. It was agony. We tried to ignore it, but then our children's eyes started to turn silver too. They started to feel the hum of the robots, and other electrical equipment we had abandoned up on the mountain. Forbidden things, things we never spoke of. But the children didn't understand, and they grew curious. The rest of the village grew frightened. They said we were poisoning the next generation with our sorcery. We were cast out, each and every person whose genes had been corrupted by Orochimaru's experiments. We started a new life on the mountain. Occasionally Reed discovers someone new with latent abilities and cursed eyes. They drive them out, and we bring them home."

Yumi took a deep breath, slowly releasing the others from the spell of her story. The healing woman rolled up her bandages, and the cook came over to clear the table.

"Wait a minute," Sakura said, "You haven't explained why you went back to the cave, or what you did in the labs. Those robots nearly killed me, and I'm still not sure my comrades made it out in one piece." She must have told herself a thousand times since last night that Kakashi was definitely alive, that she had let go in time for him to save himself. Sai couldn't have been far off when she fell, and without that assurance, her sacrifice was meaningless.

Yumi had begun to stand, but stopped. "My apologies. Our actions that day, after all, are what brought you here. Living so close to the mountain, it was hard to put the robots from our minds. After so much time they were suffering, alone in the dark. The remnants of the lab seemed to be sustaining them just enough to prolong that suffering. When we got wind that Orochimaru might be active again, we knew he couldn't be allowed to pick up here where he had left off. To prevent the robots from that fate, we would have to put them out of their misery. But we couldn't just destroy them; they were too close to us. So after a long period of debate, we decided to return to that lab for the last time. The robots were reprogrammed to lie dormant unless the lab was breached, in which case they would rise up, destroy the intruder, and send the whole place tumbling into the river."

"Enter a group of blundering Konoha nin."

Yumi grimaced. "That wasn't our intention. We didn't realise Reed had seen us enter the cave, or could think we were doing anything sinister. It was only meant to be a precaution against Orochimaru."

"So," Sakura stood, brushing a stray piece of rice from her green dress, "what now?"

"Well, I guess we get you home. The sun is already high in the sky, and the sooner you return to the village, the better."

"So I can clear your name?"

"So they don't come looking for you."

Sakura paused. "You're really scared of them, aren't you? Even though from what I've seen of Reed and your camp, you'd actually be at an advantage in conflict."

"Listen ninja," Yumi said, "we aren't soldiers. We're survivors."


	8. Chapter 8

There was commotion outside Kakashi's tent, and for the second time that day he was roused awake. He lay in bed for a while, trying to piece together what he was hearing. Somebody was banging pots and pans into a rhythmic beat. Someone else joined in, and soon it sounded like the whole village was rattling their crockery. Amongst the cacophony were voices, shouts and long wails like a mob of angry cats.

Slowly, still painfully, Kakashi rolled onto his side and stood up. Opening the door and stepping outside, he found what must have been the entire village standing and kneeling in the streets. It was reminiscent of Sakura's memorial, but instead of eerie silence the villagers were wailing and screeching openly. They had dragged their pots into the street and were banging on them with such ferocity that already shards of broken clay were scattered about here and there. Even the children were making noise, but from their blank faces they seemed as uncomprehending of the reason as Kakashi was.

What to do? Was there something wrong, or was this simply something that Reed village did from time to time? He hovered at the edge of the commotion, waiting for the bizarre ritual to end. His wound itched, and he fought the urge to scratch at it. Sakura had scolded him plenty of times about making his injuries worse that way. If she saw him covered in fresh blood from disturbed bandages, he'd never hear the end of it.

But then, she never would know if he scratched at his wound, would she? She would never again chide him for his lack of self-control, or make a fuss about the stiches she would have to replace, _and kami help you if you pull them out again, Kakashi!_

He dug a finger under the outer wrapping of his bandages. Scratching the dried blood would only cause fresh blood to well up, but that was a problem for the future. For now, the temporary relief was too great to pass up.

"Ah, Kakashi!"

Five men had entered the village square, each wearing one of the masks from the fence. It was the middle one who had spoken, who now removed his mask and trotted over to Kakashi.

"Bunta. What's going on?"

The commotion had died down at the sight of the masked men, though there were still some children banging on pots, and adults crying out. The two surveyed the scene.

"Ah, you see my friend, there was an attack this morning. A few of the bandits came to terrorise the village, but we drove them back, as we always do."

"The bandits were _here_?"

Bunta nodded. "They do this sometimes. Try to infiltrate our borders, ruin our peace."

"You should have called me. I could have helped."

"Oh, no!" Bunta waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. "We've got a system figured out. That's where the masks come in handy." He raised his own, a red and white face that looked vaguely canine. Sakura had been right; they did look like ANBU masks.

"A few of us elders use them to scare the bandits off as we drive them back up into the mountains. The other villagers stay here and create that din you heard in order to deter them from coming back. And they don't." He said this with a grim finality.

Kakashi looked again at the other villagers. The bandits had been driven back, but instead of celebrating they seemed more subdued than ever. People were returning to their homes, dragging children in one hand and their pots and pans in the other. Some were trying to clean up the shattered clay pieces, while others, like one woman a little distance away, were so overcome with emotion that they could do nothing more than sit in the street and weep. An older woman approached her and slowly coaxed her back inside.

"These bandits must be a terrible blight on this village," Kakashi murmured, half to himself.

"My friend, you have no idea." Bunta shook his head. "But we continue on, each and every day. We will be here long after the last bandit dies out."

With that, the man excused himself to go and return the mask to the fence, where it could "continue to protect them." Kakashi watched him go.

 _Fool,_ he thought, scratching at his wound once more. _Masks won't protect you. Only the people under them can._

When he looked at his fingers, they were red with fresh blood.


	9. Chapter 9

Sakura and a group of five others picked their way slowly down the mountain. At first she thought they were moving so carefully out of concern for her arm, but about halfway down Yumi called for a break and gathered their little group together.

"After this point, we are officially in Reed territory," she told them. "Even though they rarely come up this far, it's not impossible." Sakura could see her mouth drawn down into a tight, unhappy line.

The others nodded grimly, wiping damp palms and swallowing hard. Sakura recognised the symptoms of fear.

"I can make own way from here," she said, smiling. "You've already done so much for me, and if you don't head home now you won't get there before nightfall."

"If you continue on without an escort, you won't make it to Reed before nightfall either, and you'll end up wandering through the dark and falling off the side of the mountain." Yumi shook her head. "Don't worry about us, ninja. We'll get you close enough to see the lights of the village, but not so close that the villagers see us."

"Hopefully," one man muttered. Yumi ignored him.

It was twenty minutes later, and the party was navigating a particularly steep part of the path. On her way up the mountain with her teammates, she had bounded up the loose rock with no more trouble than if she were climbing the stairs of Hokage Tower. Now, one arm bandaged and the rest of her feeling bruised and fatigued, it was all she could do to stay upright.

After stumbling into a graceless heap for what felt like the fiftieth time, a sound caught her attention.

"There's someone on the path ahead," she whispered to Yumi.

Yumi, who had been helping Sakura to her feet, paused to listen. It was true. Twigs were snapping and rocks were sliding with the unmistakable sound of human footsteps. Whoever made the sound was approaching the blind corner that for now hid everyone from sight.

"Back up," Yumi breathed, and the others didn't hesitate. In seconds they had disappeared into the trees further back.

Sakura stood her ground and dusted herself off as best she could. "I'll go out there and talk to them. If they're from the village then they're looking for me." As much as she felt sympathy for Yumi and the others, her heart was soaring with relief. Her journey was almost over; the villagers would pick up where the campers left off, with the added bonus of putting her fears for her comrades to rest. They would tell her Kakashi was alive and well, she would return and give him proper medical care, and the nightmare of their nearly dying would be over.

She rounded the corner with this thought firmly in her mind. Kakashi was alive and well (it took more than that to kill the Great Hatake Kakashi), she would give him proper medical care (she could already imagine him pouting and assuring her it was just a scratch, don't worry about it), and the nightmare would be over (she was more than ready to wake up).

"I'm here! You found m-"

It wasn't a search party. Climbing up the path, practically crawling with clumsy exhaustion, was a child. They couldn't be much older than six, they were so tiny. Their head was bowed forward, dark hair matted with even darker blood from a wound to the head. They glanced up at her, a cry of disoriented terror escaping their lips before they had the chance to process the kind girl with the pink hair that they had seen at the village yesterday. Their silver eyes widened with relief.

"Oh, Kami," Sakura murmured, dashing forward to scoop the child up before they collapsed. "Yumi!" she called, "Yumi!"

Yumi appeared from around the corner as the child (a boy, she could see now) collapsed forward. Sakura caught him with her good arm, cradling the tiny body in her lap. She looked up at Yumi, who looked down at her. There was a chill in the other woman's expression. At first Sakura thought it was directed at the child, but then her friend turned to the side and spat with vehemence.

"Curse you, Reed. Everyone! Come meet the newest member of our community!"

The child wheezed in Sakura's lap, too exhausted to cry. Sakura brushed back their hair to examine the cut on their head. Head wounds tended to bleed a lot even if they were superficial, but children had delicate bodies and she wanted to make sure he was truly ok.

"What's your name?" she asked the boy, and he slowly focused on her face.

"Shinji."

"Shinji, how did you cut your head? Did you fall down on the path?"

He shook his head, just a weak twitch from side to side. "A monster threw a rock at my head."

Sakura took another look at the cut. Perhaps it was more serious than it looked. "A monster?"

The other members of her escort approached, slow and quiet. Even then, the boy balked.

"They're the bad people!"

Yumi frowned, but stood back. "Ask him if he knows why he was driven away," she murmured to Sakura, gesturing at her own silver eyes.

Shinji paused, thinking. "Mama started crying," he said. "Then the monsters chased me away."

"Monsters?" Sakura repeated. None of the others seemed surprised by the word.

"People with…masks. Like the ones that protect us. But they told me to leave the village and threw rocks at me when I tried to come back." A single fat tear rolled down his bloodied cheek.

Sakura was aghast. What sort of barbarians attacked children? What sort of cowards used masks to hide their faces?

"Help me get him back to your camp," she murmured to Yumi.

Yumi frowned. "You're coming back? What about getting you home?"

"Reed is _not_ my home. And this boy needs proper medical attention."

"But your comrades. They'll be sick with worry if you don't turn up soon."

Sakura paused. She was desperate to see Kakashi and Sai, to know for a fact they were alright. But as a medic, she was duty-bound to help the casualties of war. She took that oath particularly seriously when it came to children.

"Shinji?"

The boy looked up at the kind woman with the beautiful hair.

"Shinji, do you remember my two friends that were with me when I arrived at the village? Do you know if they're okay?"

Shinji closed his eyes. "We lit lanterns. But I saw both of your friends there."

"Thank Kami for that," Sakura sighed, feeling a weight lift from her shoulders. Even knowing in her heart that they had made it out of the mountain alive, it was still a relief to have it confirmed.

"Your poor friends," Yumi murmured. Sakura turned to her, relief freezing back into fear.

"Why? What's wrong?"

"The lanterns. Reed only lights them when someone passes away."

Sakura stared. "But. Shinji saw them both there, so…"

The other woman gave her a sympathetic look. "Yes, I'm sure they were. But you weren't."

"Me?" Sakura blinked. "Oh. _Me."_

Yumi placed a light hand on her good arm. "We would understand if you wanted to part ways after all."

"No," Sakura shook her head a little too hard. "No, I have to see this through. It's not just the head wound that needs healing, it's all of it. The emotional trauma that Shinji," the boy stirred slightly at the mention of his name, "and the others have been through. My friends can wait a little longer."

It took them the rest of the light to get back up the mountain, with Shinji suspended on a stretcher between two of the stronger-looking men. Sakura stayed close to him, talking softly even as he flitted in and out of consciousness.

When the party returned with not only the ninja from last night still with them, but also a young boy in tow, a lot of things happened at once. People ran to spread the word, collecting food and telling errant children to wash their faces. Tents were brought down in one area to be erected in another.

"When we have a newcomer, we like to give them a proper welcome," Yumi explained as they followed the stretcher into the same tent Sakura remembered waking up in a few hours earlier. Shinji was lowered to the ground and Sakura got to work, gently raising him into a sitting position.

The old woman who had examined her arm came in with a bowl of cool water and a bundle of bandages. Sakura worked on kneading chakra into the boy's aching muscles while the woman cleaned his more minor scrapes. Shinji was still wary of the silver-eyed strangers, wincing with pain and fear every time anyone but Sakura touched him. After a few minutes, Yumi stood up from her position by the doorway, and left. Sakura assumed she had gone to oversee the flurry of activity in the camp, but before long the woman had returned with a dish of succulent red berries.

"I thought our little patient might like a snack. Your magic may be healing his body, but only food and rest will heal his soul."

Sakura smiled. "Perfect timing. Shinji's been very brave while I cleaned his head wound, and he's earned a nice treat." Her good hand still radiated soft green light, moving over the cut on the boy's forehead. Despite her best efforts, with one arm out of commission her touch lacked its usual gentleness. With some energy restored, Shinji had been crying openly from both pain and despair as Sakura worked. He perked up a little at receiving the berries, fear of the silver eyes forgotten just long enough to allow the old woman to bandage his head.

Sakura watched, wishing she was at home in Konoha with a team of professionals and an arm that actually worked. There, she had the Children's Mental Healthcare Clinic, among other initiatives that served to treat traumatised children like Shinji. There, she could actually do something for the pain, more than chakra alone could provide.

A thought struck her. She took one of the berries from the bowl and pressed its juicy flesh against her lips.

"Alright Shinji, your cut's all taken care of. Shall I use my healing magic to make it feel even better?"

Shinji looked at her hand. "The glowing?"

"Even better," Sakura replied. Leaning over in a rather maternal gesture, she placed a single kiss over the top of Shinji's bandage. There, she left not only a quick dose of numbing chakra, but a berry-stained print of two lips.

"Feel a little better?" she asked, and for the first time, Shinji smiled.

They left Shinji to rest for a while, and Sakura wandered outside to see if she could help around the camp in some way. She felt an increasing need to keep herself busy. She truly liked these people, and wanted to help them as much as possible. But she had been so close to finally being reunited with her comrades. With Kakashi.

"What do you think you're doing, healer?" Yumi caught up with her at the edge of a tent that several campers were trying to dismantle. "If you want to help, we've got plenty more people in need of your magic."

"It's not magic," Sakura straightened from the tent peg she was trying unsuccessfully to loosen. "I know you're not shinobi, but you should still know chakra when you see it."

"I wasn't referring to your chakra, though we've got plenty of people who haven't had a proper physical in years. I mean your magic, what you did at the very end there. You're the sort of person that heals the mind as well as the body."

Sakura shifted her feet. "I try to."

Yumi nodded. "That's all I'm asking, if you're up for it. If you could just talk to people, especially the children, then that would make the world of difference to this community."

And so Sakura was set up in another tent, with Yumi ushering people in one family at a time. Sakura would give each member of the family a quick check-up, using a small amount of chakra to make sure she caught anything that might be hiding. Pretty much everyone was mildly malnourished, but they were surprisingly healthy for people that lived in tents in the woods.

As she spoke, she listened to their stories. This was where the real injuries lay. But as she listened, and occasionally spoke to offer words of advice and comfort, she could feel the collective tension lessen ever-so slightly. Once again, she longed for her mental health institute, and vowed that when she returned to Konoha she would send a group of counsellors out to do a proper job of healing this community's heart.

"Next?" Sakura called, and Yumi stuck her head in.

"That's it. You've seen everyone."

"Oh, good." She yawned. "I'm almost at my limit, anyway."

"Come have dinner. It's a special night, so we're eating under the stars."

Yumi led Sakura outside to where a bonfire crackled merrily. The long benches from the mess hall were arranged around the edge, and pretty much everyone seemed to be sitting or standing in the comforting glow of the flames. Sakura found that she could recognise most of the faces, and many of them waved at her as she approached. It warmed her heart more than the fire.

"And here's little Shinji, woken up from his rest." Yumi gestured to the little boy, who sat with a middle-aged couple holding a baby. If not for his bandaged head, he might have blended perfectly with the others.

"Hi Shinji, I'm glad to see you're feeling better," Sakura said, and the boy gave her a shy smile.

"Turns out Shinji's aunt joined us a few years ago," Yumi nodded at the woman with the baby, "and he still remembers her well enough to feel a little less alone."

"Thank Kami," Sakura murmured.

Yumi showed her to an empty seat and pressed a bowl of stew into her hands. "Eat this, and get your strength back up. Tonight, you're our guest of honour."


	10. Chapter 10

Every step that Kakashi took up the mountain seemed to sap more of his energy. He had lost near-fatal amounts of blood before, but he'd always gotten medical attention within minutes. Now, with only his body's natural rate of healing and a whole mountain to climb, his limbs felt like lead.

But he pushed past the heaviness, and ignored the searing pain of his abdomen. All the little ways his body was telling him it needed to rest, to heal, were meaningless at this point. His body was trying to preserve itself for the future, but Kakashi lived only for tonight.

He adjusted the mask on his face. Unlike an ANBU mask, it wasn't made to fit him, and hung a little loose as a result. But its weight was familiar, and helped him recall a past life that he could escape to.

 _I am not Hatake Kakashi. Hatake Kakashi was a pathetic man who couldn't protect his comrades. I am a weapon. I was born to kill. Nothing more._

As he got further up the mountain, the signs of life increased. Soon he was zeroing in on human sounds: laughter, talking, the crackle of a fire. He was so close he could feel the heat of the encampment. The bandits weren't even trying to hide. Their arrogance would mean their deaths. Maybe they felt safe when they were attacking innocent villagers, or picking off shinobi from a distance with their booby traps. But he was an ANBU-trained, jounin-level weapon of Konoha. He would send every last bandit to hell, and then meet them there for Round 2.

"It's getting late. I'm going to turn in," Sakura told Yumi. She'd sat by the fire, hearing stories and songs, for the last several hours. None of the campers seemed perturbed by the late hour, but Sakura had a mountain to climb down tomorrow, and wanted to get an early start.

Yumi smiled. "Sweet dreams, ninja. You alright to stay in the medical tent? Shinji has already been relocated to his aunt's tent." She glanced at the boy as he ran past with a stick. He seemed to be playing some sort of game with pair of children close to his age.

"It's good to see him looking a little more lively," Sakura murmured, "tell him I said goodbye, if I leave before he wakes up tomorrow."

Yumi nodded, waving her away to her tent. It practically called out to her, beckoning her to her warm blanket and a well-earned rest.

She was just about to pull back the flap when she heard the screams.

Kakashi might have attempted to be stealthy, and pick off the bandits from the shadows. But he had no need for self-preservation. He leapt into the light cast by the fire, blade in hand.

The ill-fitting eyeholes of his stolen mask compromised a lot of his peripheral vision, and the glare of the fire burnt out his night-vision and reduced the bandits to shadowy figures. But with the bloodlust rising like bile in his throat, he could have cut them all down blindfolded.

He stepped forward, and screams cut through the night air. So the bandits were cowards after all. Unsurprising, given their tactics so far. He continued to walk, waiting for one brave or foolish enough to engage him. They scattered, knocking down benches and scattering dishes in their desperation to get away from him. He could hear children crying, and a voice in the back of his mind whispered something urgent but indistinct. He ignored it; after all, he had killed children before. It wasn't something he was proud of, but ANBU rarely had the luxury of leaving witnesses.

One such innocent life stood cowering in his path. A small boy, shaking like a leaf, with a bandage on his head. The bandage had a red mark on it, like blood. Or was it lipstick?

His whole body froze in place, eyes straining for a better look at that familiar mark. Other sounds, even the voice in his head, faded out to silence.

A flicker of movement was all the warning he received before a fist collided with his face, shattering the clay of his mask. The force knocked him back and he slid, tumbling, along the ground. The air was pounded out of his lungs and it felt like his belly wound had reopened with the trauma.

Finally, he slowed to a halt and he lay, spread-eagled and wheezing, on his back.

"You Reed bastards have terrorised these people long enough!"

A fist grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him into a sitting position. His eyes felt like they'd been knocked out of his head, but he forced himself to focus on the person in front of him. A person he never thought he'd see again.

"Sakura." The last of his bloodlust evaporated at the sight of her pink hair and her furious, utterly-alive green eyes. He drank her in. She looked pale, even lit by the orange glow of the fire, and fine cuts and bruises ran along every inch of skin he could see. She was wearing a green dress he'd never seen before, and her left arm was in a sling. In short, she looked terrible, but considering the fate he had imagined for her, he thought she had never looked more beautiful.

She glared at him a moment longer before her brows knit in confusion. It occurred to him that he wasn't wearing his usual half-mask, and she might not recognise his face. But then the hand holding his shirt fell away, and she was throwing her good arm around his neck.

"Kakashi!" She enveloped him in a clumsy, suffocating hug that filled his throbbing nose with pink hair. His arms wrapped around her too, feeling her warm body and all its contours.

Too quickly, Sakura pulled away. "Kakashi, what are you doing here?"

Before he could answer, an unfamiliar female voice called out. "Kunoichi?"

Sakura turned. "Yumi, this is one of my comrades. He's not with Reed and he's not a threat, I promise you."

A woman stepped forward, even as the rest of the group was still fleeing in the opposite direction. The firelight reflected strangely in her eyes as she stared down at him. Finally, she spoke again.

"Take him back to your tent. I will talk to the others."

Sakura nodded, pulling herself to her feet. "Come on, Kakashi. I think both of us have some explaining to do."


	11. Chapter 11

Sakura lead Kakashi to one of the tents, almost shoving him inside. It seemed the 'bandits' were little more than a bunch of scared men, women and children, and he had caused quite the commotion barging in on them the way he had. There was an explanation he needed to hear at some point, but for now all he could focus on was the woman in front of him.

"Sakura," he said, just to make her look at him.

The tent was dimly lit, but her eyes still found his for a moment before she once again pulled him into a hug.

"I've missed you," she murmured into his chest, and he felt something lost in him click back into place. His arms circled around her, moving slowly but wrapping her tightly against him. 'Missed' didn't seem nearly strong enough for what he had felt the last few days.

"I thought you were dead," he said simply, and Sakura's body stiffened for a moment.

"I was lucky. There was water at the bottom of that chasm, and I managed to not break my neck when I hit it." She laughed a little, clearly trying to downplay the experience, but Kakashi's heart lurched with fresh terror for her.

She must have heard it in his heartbeat, because she pulled back from him to look him in the eye once more. "I'm okay, really. I got out eventually and ended up here, but that's kind of a long story and the last time I saw you, you were badly wounded. Let me take a look." She gestured to a mattress on the floor.

Kakashi had seen her in 'medic mode' enough times to know that there would be little he could get out of her until she was satisfied with his treatment. He laid down obediently, but didn't take his eyes off her. Part of him was still afraid she would disappear.

She switched on a solar-powered lantern and moved to kneel beside him.

"Did the people in Reed take care of you?" she asked, peeling back his bandages.

"Yes."

She examined the wound, clicking her tongue. "Well it's not infected, at least. I'll help it along with a little chakra tonight, but you could probably use some stitches before we leave tomorrow."

She began forming the healing seals, the sling making her slightly clumsy. Kakashi reached out and wrapped his fingers around her hands. "Don't you need to conserve your chakra for your own injury?" He nodded at her arm.

"Oh, this? I set the bones already, so it's not too pressing. Besides, I'm the medic, it's my job to make you feel better." She smiled at him again, but Kakashi couldn't return it.

"And I'm the captain. It's my job to keep the medic safe." _And I failed._ "Just leave it as it is, it'll keep until the morning."

"Doesn't it hurt?" her eyes were wide with concern, but Kakashi could have laughed. He doubted he would ever feel something as petty as physical pain again.

"Seriously, don't worry about it. That's an order."

Sakura smiled, gently replacing the bandages she had disturbed. "I always worry about you, Kakashi."

 _Stop worrying about_ me _!_ he wanted to say, even as his traitor heart soared. He didn't deserve her worry, and all that smile implied.

"Sakura, about that conversation we had in the cave…"

She cut him off before he could continue, turning away from him to fiddle with the lantern.

"We don't have to talk about that. You made your feelings clear, and I respect them. It won't change things between us." She flashed him another, brief smile before the light went out, but this time it was too-cheerful and did nothing to mask her reddening cheeks.

She flopped down on the bedroll as far away from him as she could possibly get without physically rolling off. "Sorry it's so cramped. Sleep well."

After that, she fell so silent she could have actually been asleep. But Kakashi knew better, and refused to leave things as they were.

"I only brought it up because I wanted to apologise. You were right, of course I had thought about…you. I just didn't want to admit it, because then everything would change and maybe it would ruin what we already had." Sakura remained silent, but he knew she was listening.

"But then, everything changed anyway. I honestly thought you were gone forever, Sakura." He swallowed. "And I hated that I'd lost my chance to change my answer. Maybe I've still lost my chance. Maybe that's the price I pay for getting you back. You said yourself you weren't going to run after another stupid boy who doesn't know what he wants. But I needed you to know that I want you. I'm sorry it took losing you for me to figure that out." Now it was his turn to blush. He'd never been good at talking to people, especially women. Sakura was usually the exception to that rule, but suddenly he had an awful premonition that she would laugh in his face.

She didn't laugh. He could barely turn his face in her direction, even in the dark, but a hand touched his cheek and gently pulled him closer. He knew what she was about to do, and the anticipation of the moment heightened every detail his remaining senses could pick up: the feel of her calloused hand on his bare face, the sound of her uneven breaths in his ear, the smell of her hair as it fanned across the rapidly closing distance between them, and finally, the exquisite taste of her lips on his.


	12. Chapter 12

After he had left Kakashi back in Reed, Sai had raced back to Konoha as fast as his chakra reserves would allow. While Sakura and Kakashi slept peacefully, reunited at last, Sai ploughed on through the night. He hadn't even bothered to pack his bedroll; it would have only slowed him down. He knew that no matter how quickly he reached Konoha, it wouldn't change the fact that Sakura was gone. But it felt wrong to leave her body down in that crevasse, and he didn't like the look in Kakashi's eyes as he left.

He stumbled into town around 10am the next day, sleep-deprived but determined to break the tragic news as swiftly and cleanly as possible. He ignored the gatekeepers' questions about the rest of his team, and made a beeline for Hokage tower.

"Enter, please." The Hokage sounded calm, almost leisurely, today. That wasn't likely to last.

"Oh, hey Sai!" Naruto waved from the corner desk as soon as Sai walked in. His head was just visible over a stack of papers. He smiled his famous smile, then craned his neck back to the door. "Where's Sakura and Kakashi-sensei?"

 _Why did that idiot have to be here?_ Sai groaned silently. _He shouldn't have to hear it like this._

He turned to address Tsunade. "Kakashi is recuperating back at Reed village, following a serious but non-fatal injury to his abdomen. And Sakura…" his voice trailed off meaningfully. He could tell from the way the Hokage's honey-brown eyes instantly clouded over that she understood his unspoken words all too well. Her apprentice was a medic; if a comrade was incapacitated as Kakashi was, it would have been Sakura's duty to heal him while ever there was breath in her lungs, and then they would have all been walking through that door right now.

"Sakura's what, Sai?" Naruto asked, but Sai could tell from his low tone that he also understood, but needed it to be said aloud. He sighed.

"K.I.A."

The word seemed to suck all the air out of the room and for a moment all three of them could do nothing but struggle to breathe. Tsunade's whole body was tense, as if the woman was trying by sheer force of will to keep the tears of grief from coming. Naruto, by comparison, was already crying hard, fat tears rolling off his whiskered cheeks and blotting important documents. He stepped out from the desk and crossed the room to face Sai.

"She's dead?" his voice was quiet, quieter than Sai had ever known it, and it hurt him to look at those wounded blue eyes. The guilt was as strong as if he'd caused her death himself.

"I'm afraid so. She…took a fall, and nobody could have survived a drop like that one. I'm so sorry, Naruto, Tsunade-sama."

"Don't be sorry, Sai. I'm sure you did all you could to save her." Tsunade unfroze herself briefly to spare him a kindly smile.

"Actually, we had separated, and she was already…gone, before I arrived. She sacrificed herself to save Kakashi-Taichou."

"That sounds like Sakura."

"None of us realised what we were walking into. We were…unprepared for what Orochimaru had created."

A single bitter tear finally wriggled its way out of Tsunade's eye. "That bastard. We should have stamped him out for good the moment the war was over."

"I should have gone with you," Naruto moaned, raking his fingers through his hair. "I could have stopped this from happening."

"Naruto, you can't be everywhere at once, and you have to get used to others fighting battles without you. If you can't handle this, then give up on being Hokage now!" Tsunade slammed her fist on the desk, and a sake cup rattled so hard that it fell to the floor and shattered. The woman barely acknowledged it, bowing her head and finally letting her body be torn apart by wracking sobs.

Shizune hurried through the still-open door, summoned by the racket. "What's happened?!" she cried, taking in the scene. She rushed to her mistress' side, carefully side-stepping the broken pottery.

Sai couldn't take any more. He had shed a few tears for Sakura when the wound was freshest, but he wasn't sure he could give himself over to emotion as fully as Tsunade, Naruto, and now Shizune were. Their grief only highlighted his own emotional deficiency.

He ploughed through the remaining formalities, focusing on a blank space on the wall ahead of him. "I humbly recommend sending a medical team to Reed to treat Kakashi-Taichou's injuries and recover...Sakura's body."

"Understood," Tsunade managed to reply, and Shizune burst into fresh tears.

"Excuse me." He gave a short bow and span on his heel. Naruto looked like he wanted to stop him, but was rooted to the spot. Sai was grateful to escape the room unhindered. He wanted only to go back to his apartment and sleep for as many hours as it took to make this whole thing feel like a bad dream.

Unthinkingly, he took the shortest route from Hokage tower, which sent him right by the Yamanaka Flower Shop. On any other day, he would be glad to stop and appreciate the splash of friendly colours that always filled the front window. He had sometimes found himself passing it several times in a single day, even when it was well out of his path. Perhaps it was his unconscious way of seeking out beauty. But today, when the usual blonde beauty stepped out into his path, he wished he had thought to take a detour.

"You're back early, Sai-kun," Ino smiled, brushing some dirt off the front of her smock. "I asked Sakura to help me with an order of bouquets, but she said she'd be out until Thursday at least. Tell me, did she just say that to get out of helping me, or was the mission easier than you expected?"

He could hardly look at her. His tongue felt paralysed, like the old seal was still there preventing him from speaking.

Ino's smile faltered, and she stepped closer to examine him properly. "Actually, you don't look so good, Sai-kun."

"Ino..."

"Where's Sakura?"

He finally met her wide, cornflower blue eyes. "She...Ino, I'm so sorry, she's been killed."

Watching the woman's sweet face slowly crumple with grief was like watching a flower wilt before his eyes. Her eyes slowly closed, and she frowned as though trying to remember—or forget—something important. Then she threw back her head and cried aloud, a gasping, strangled cry that cut through Sai like a blade.

He felt terrible for being the bearer of such devastating news, worse, in some ways, than when he had told Tsunade and Naruto. Their pain had saddened him, but he could feel Ino's pain as if it were his own. His heart couldn't bear seeing her so upset.

"Ino, I'm so sorry." The word 'sorry' was starting to feel hollow with use. He didn't feel sorry, he felt like he was having a heart attack. She just looked so frail, which was ridiculous considering everything he knew she could do. He found himself reaching out to her, making his body a frame that could hold her up.

At first she was too caught up in her raw misery to register his touch, but soon her body yielded to his, pressing closer so that her tears were soaking his shirt and her long hair was tickling his nose. He didn't mind one iota if it made her feel a little better. If he could do that for her, he'd endure worse.

He gazed above him at the perfect blue sky. It seemed wrong that the day should be so beautiful, when something so terrible had happened. But Sai was an artist, and he understood that there was beauty in all sorts of places. Standing there in the street, holding Yamanaka Ino closer than he had ever dared or expected to hold her in his life, he thought there might be at least a sliver of beauty in that moment too.


	13. Chapter 13

Kakashi and Sakura woke with the dawn, to prepare for the journey back to Konoha. Working with the ease and efficiency that only years of comradeship can teach, Sakura cleaned and stitched Kakashi's wound, taking the time to finally explain the situation regarding Reed and the camp. Kakashi listened attentively, only asking a few questions for clarification. They were in mission-mode, but there was still an energy between them, an unspoken but happy development in their relationship.

Injured as they were, they hadn't been able to do much more last night than share a single chaste kiss, and fall asleep nestled against each other. Sakura could hardly believe she'd had the guts to make a move like that, but even now, thinking about Kakashi's confession, and the look in his eyes when he saw she was alive, Sakura wanted nothing more than to kiss him again.

But that would have to wait until after they had talked to Yumi, and smoothed things over with the camp.

"I'm sorry for what happened last night," Kakashi bowed to Yumi and Kazuro as deeply as his wound would allow. "Sakura has explained the situation, and I share her opinion. Reed village has lied not only to us, but to our Hokage, and when we return to Konoha our report will exonerate your people."

Kazuro continued to look at him cooly, but Yumi dipped her head in acknowledgement. "Your comrade has been a great help to us lately. She has our trust, and since she vouched for you, we trust in your own goodness. I have been talking to the others, and they are convinced you do not mean us further harm. That being said, it would probably be best for everyone if you left quickly and quietly."

Kakashi bowed again. His actions last night still filled him with shame, but his heart swelled with pride for Sakura. She had been here barely a full day, but the camp leader already held her in high regard.

Sakura stepped forward to give Yumi a one-armed hug. "We'll send a team right away, with more supplies and medical assistance. For Reed too, I suppose," she added grudgingly, but Yumi only smiled.

"Their fear hurts us, but many of them are our family, too. If your 'healing magic' can reach them, then we will have another reason to consider Konoha our allies." She squeezed Sakura's working arm. "Now go; you have a long journey ahead, and this time you'll be making it alone."

"Not alone," Sakura corrected, and turned to Kakashi. "Shall we?"

They left Yumi and Kazuro at the edge of camp, and made their way back down the mountain. Even without guides to escort them, with the combination of the rising sun and their light hearts, they found themselves at the base of Reed village in no time.

"I almost don't want to go in," Sakura said, gazing at the masks on the fence.

"They're jerks, but they mourned for you," Kakashi reminded her, nudging her good arm. "Besides, all our stuff is still here."

The first few villagers that saw them enter immediately turned and ran in the opposite direction, causing a cacophony of chatter to spread ahead of them like smoke before a fire. The two shinobi could only catch a few snippets.

"—do you think he actually—"

"—she couldn't possibly—"

"—trouble…"

Before long, Bunta himself came to meet them. He clasped his hands together, seemingly overjoyed to see them.

"My friend, you found her! We were convinced, when we saw your bed was empty, that you had headed back to your own village, overcome with grief. But it seems you didn't give up hope after all, and we're so happy you were right!" He did look sincerely happy to see Sakura, but her expression made it clear the feeling wasn't mutual.

Kakashi stepped forward. "Actually, I had lost hope. I went back up the mountain, but it wasn't to find Sakura. He pulled the shards of mask from his kunai pouch, and threw them at Bunta's feet. "I borrowed this from your fence last night, when I went to fix your 'bandit' problem once and for all. As for the condition it's in now, it got broken when I had some sense knocked into me."

Bunta's eyes travelled between the broken clay face and those of the two shinobi. Sakura was almost hoping he would deny the accusation, so she could knock some sense into him too.

But it seemed he was able to put and two together, and knew the truth was out. He shrugged apologetically.

"Perhaps it was wrong to lie to you about the exact source of our troubles," he said, "but I assure you, those… _things_ up on that mountain are every bit as bad."

"Those 'things' are your own people!" Sakura surged forward and grabbed the front of Bunta's shirt with her good arm. "They're victims, and your 'troubles' come from your own fear and ignorance!"

Kakashi's hand clamped down on her shoulder in a silent warning.

"Don't worry," she told him, "I'm not about to hurt him when I don't have the chakra to spare on healing him again." She stared into Bunta's squirming face a moment longer, then released her grip on his shirt.

While Bunta stumbled back in a daze, Sakura addressed the other villagers.

"When we return to Konoha, we will be sending aid to this village, if you will accept it: healing, education, and resources that will drastically improve your quality of life. We will also be extending this aid to those living on the mountain. They saved my life, even though they knew I came from Reed and would most likely be poisoned against them. You have them to thank for Konoha's generosity, and our forgiveness."

She peered at the shocked, shamed, faces before her. "Which one of you is Shinji's mother?"

Several pairs of eyes fell on a single pale woman, who slowly raised her hand when it was clear she could no longer hide.

"I'm not even sure you care, but I wanted you to know that your son is alive, and is staying with his aunt and the others your village has abandoned over the years," she told her. The woman held a hand over her mouth and shut her eyes. Was she relieved? Regretful? Sakura wasn't sure, and she didn't have the energy to probe any deeper than that. She reached up and squeezed Kakashi's hand where it still lay on her shoulder.

"Let's go home."

They collected their things unchallenged, and left Reed village for what Kakashi hoped would be the last time. Even if it weren't full of hate and deceit, it was a place he would forever associate with heartbreak.

They hit the road, and every step that took the pair further from Reed and closer to home seemed to give them fresh energy. It would have been wise to go slowly and spare their injuries, but Sakura was adamant she had enough chakra in reserve to increase her pace. Kakashi agreed, as long as they took frequent breaks to make sure she didn't tire herself out.

Sakura scoffed. "I'm fine. I have _amazing_ chakra control, remember? Just because I'm a little low doesn't mean I can't do _anything_."

"I know that," Kakashi said, "But as your captain, I—"

"Oh, you're speaking as my _captain,_ " Sakura grinned, leaning in until their faces were almost touching. "Well Captain, I'm grateful for your concern, but I can handle this pace." She wrapped her right hand around his left bicep, giving it a squeeze. "But if you want to duck into the trees and 'rest' for a while, I wouldn't mind. What do you say?"

The look she gave him was a little shy, but unambiguous. Pleasant warmth spread from the pressure of her hand on his arm, but he forced himself to reach up and gently move her away.

"Sakura, you know we can't do that."

Sakura's expression closed off so quickly it was like watching a door slam shut. She wrenched her hand from his and turned away. Kakashi watched this change with confusion.

"What is it?"

"You told me you'd finally made your mind up," she said, reproachful. "But you're still not sure about this, are you?" Her eyes shifted to the ground, and Kakashi had to duck his head to make her look at him again.

"Hey," he said softly. "That's not what I meant. I'm an idiot, because I realise now that it could have sounded that way. I'm really not good at this sort of thing," he sighed. "But trust me, I do want to…be with you. We just can't be together in 'that way' until we get back to Konoha."

She finally looked at him. "Why not?"

He ran a finger along the strap of her sling. "For one thing, your arm is broken."

Sakura shook her head. "I told you, it's f—"

"—and for another thing, I'm injured too; and despite your amazing chakra, you can't heal us both without tiring yourself out completely."

She frowned, but stayed silent. He knew she couldn't argue with that.

"When we get to Konoha, the absolute first thing I am doing after getting healed up, is taking you home with me and doing everything I've wanted to do for months now. But until then, I'm afraid of hurting you." Part of him was convinced he would always be afraid of hurting her, broken arm or no. She was still the young woman who cared too much about people who didn't deserve it, and he was still a dog that was too old to learn new tricks. It would be easy for him to break her heart, now that he had it.

But for the time being, Sakura seemed happy to risk it. She rested her forehead against his chest. "I understand, and I'm sorry I doubted you. I don't want to hurt you either."

Kakashi couldn't help but laugh. "Dear Sakura. There's only one thing you could do that could ever hurt me, and you've managed to avoid it so far."


	14. Chapter 14

The trees on the side of the road began to thicken just as the shadows began to lengthen.

"We must be about halfway," Sakura said, as they stopped to catch their breath again.

"We should find somewhere to rest before it gets fully dark." Kakashi pulled a water bottle from his pack and took a swig.

Sakura nodded. "Much as I miss my shower, I think I could use a proper rest." She sat down with her back against the tree closest to the road, resting her head on her knees.

"You okay?" Kakashi knelt down in front of her. "Is this pace too much?"

Sakura gave a miserable laugh. "I'm an elite medical ninja. You'd think I could handle something like a broken arm without getting so wiped out." Kakashi offered her his drink bottle, resting a hand on her knee. It was just like her genin days; tiring out early and needing Kakashi to come to her aid. If she looked down the track, would she see Sasuke and Naruto racing each other home?

But this time was different. As if reading her thoughts, Kakashi shifted his position so that they were both leaning against the tree. He took back his drink bottle and emptied the last few mouthfuls over his head.

"I'm wiped out too, you know. I'm just better at hiding it." He blinked rivulets of water from his eyes, and now Sakura could smell the sweat mixed in with it. "Plus, unlike me, you're storing half the chakra you regain in that seal of yours. I can't even imagine how much that would slow down my recovery if I tried it."

She turned to him, half-expecting his old 'lying smile,' but he was looking away from her, down the road. He wasn't just saying it to make her feel better, but because it was true.

She smirked. "Even if you did try it, I doubt you'd have the chakra control to—"

Before she could finish her sentence. Kakashi put a hand over her mouth to silence her. Someone was approaching. No; several someones. Sakura could hear it too, once she stopped to listen. Kakashi removed his hand and they both silently got to their feet. The footsteps were coming from the Konoha direction, but their speed made it clear they were shinobi, and there was no point taking chances. They watched, and waited.

Finally the source of the footsteps became visible, and Sakura gave a cry of surprise and delight.

"Natsuko!"

The lead shinobi, a woman with ginger hair and a skirt like Sakura used to wear, screeched to a halt at the sound of her name. The other three shinobi followed her lead, and all of them stared at Sakura with unconcealed shock.

"Senpai? That's actually you, isn't it?"

"Of course it's me, who else were you expecting?" Sakura stepped out from the trees and gave the woman a one-armed hug.

Natsuko stiffly returned the hug, then held Sakura at arm's length to examine her. "I'm sorry, I'm just surprised to see you."

Kakashi came to stand at Sakura's side. "We haven't met, but judging by the fact that Sakura seems to know you, I assume you're the medical team that was sent to fetch us from Reed. Well, we couldn't wait around any longer, so we decided to come to you."

Natsuko coughed. "Our orders were to heal and retrieve Hatake Kakashi," she nodded at him, "and to recover Haruno Sakura's remains. Sakura-senpai, we were told you were dead."

It took a second for that thought to sink in. Sakura knew Kakashi and Sai had expected the worst after she got separated in the mountains, but it hadn't quite occurred to her that Sai would have reported this back to Konoha already.

"Well as you can see, we're both alive and more-or-less well." She laughed awkwardly. "But there's still plenty your team can do at Reed, and in the camp settlement further up the mountain."

"What?" Natsuko's eyebrows creased together. "No, Senpai, we're healing you two up and bringing you home!" She gestured to her team, who sprang into action. Two of them started healing Kakashi, peeling back his bandages and checking his vitals. He was used to receiving medical attention, so complied with their quiet requests for him to lift up his shirt, tell them what hurt, and the like.

The third one started on Sakura, and thought she didn't resist, she continued to stare her friend down. "Natsuko, I appreciate your concern, but don't make me pull rank on you."

Natsuko frowned. "Senpai, half of Konoha is devastated by the news that you've…perished. You've touched a lot of hearts, and now they're all breaking for you. The sooner you get back and set the story straight, the better."

"That's exactly what I'm doing! We're going as fast as we can, and once your team patches us up we'll go even faster, but there's not much point in you acting as our escorts when you could be helping two communities with _actual_ problems. Feel free to consider that an order."

Natsuko sighed in mock defeat. "I don't know why I'm surprised. If you were too stubborn to die, I suppose you're too stubborn to let this go, either." She gave her commander a rueful smile. "Tell me everything."

Night fell while Natsuko and her team fixed Sakura's broken arm and stitched Kakashi's wound back together. They sat around a small fire they had built in a clearing, sharing the best of the medics' rations. Among them was a bottle of saké that the team had brought along. It had been intended for a toast to Sakura's memory, but they were pleased to be toasting to her health instead.

"Feels good to finally have that fixed," Sakura said, moving her left arm experimentally.

"It's not like you to get so tapped out that you can't heal yourself fully, Senpai," Natsuko noted, hardly bothering to conceal her critical tone.

Sakura laughed self-consciously. "I guess between the battle with those robot creatures, and the broken arm, and the fall into the water, I ended up using more chakra than I realised. Plus, it's hard to control my output when I'm making seals with a broken arm."

"Not to mention that according to your report, you used up what little you'd regained by healing an entire camp of refugees." Natsuko pinched the bridge of her nose, and Sakura might have laughed if she hadn't felt so chastised. She was technically Natsuko's commander, but from the way Natsuko lectured her, an outsider might think it was the other way around.

Kakashi thanked the medics who had properly closed and disinfected his chest wound, as well as a handful of more minor injuries that he'd barely even noticed. "When you get to Reed, tell them Team Kakashi sent you. They'll show you hospitality, but don't forget what we told you about them and the refugee camp."

They nodded. "Yes, sir."

Sakura gave Natsuko a parting hug, lifting her off the ground with her newly regained strength. "Thanks for the help. Tell Yumi and the others I said hello."

And with that, Team Natsuko disappeared into the night.

"They'll probably arrive sometime around midnight, if they don't stop." Kakashi twitched his bedroll closer to the heat of the fire. Natsuko had made them promise to get a few hours' rest before attempting the rest of the journey home, even if they did feel a thousand times better than before.

"I'm glad the village and the camp will get the help they need so soon," Sakura said, watching the flames from their seat on a fallen log. But for the fire's gentle crackling, it was totally quiet. Combined with the saké and the absence of pain, the pair should have been totally at ease in their little camp; but instead, an unspoken question hung in the air between them. Now that they were alone and no longer hampered by their injuries, what, if anything, was stopping them from crossing that final line between friend and lover?

 _Nothing,_ Kakashi decided.

He scooted closer, putting his arm around Sakura in a way that would have hurt her arm before. Sakura leaned into him, and they stayed that way for a few minutes before she drained her saké cup and turned to face him. She slipped a finger under the edge of his mask, and when Kakashi didn't stop her, tugged it down and took in the face beneath. She'd seen it last night, and caught glimpses of it a few times before that, but it was different when Kakashi was actually inviting her, watching her face as carefully as she watched his. He was undeniably handsome, but it was so different seeing him barefaced that he was almost like a stranger. But then he smiled at her, and even though she had never really gotten the full effect of his smile before now, it made his whole face feel comfortingly familiar.

She leaned into those smiling lips, which twisted with momentary surprise before returning and deepening her kiss.

The fire continued to burn, its warm light dispelling the last remnants of doubt and uncertainty between the pair. This night was simultaneously long overdue and perfectly timed. As they sank down onto the covers of the bedroll, exploring and adoring one another, it was clear that their slow fall had finally halted, and they were both completely and inescapably in love.


	15. Chapter 15

Kakashi woke to the ashes of the fire tickling his bare back. The filtered morning light of the clearing made everything feel muted and grey, but the woman in his arms radiated warmth and colour that was all the more intense by comparison. Even in sleep, Sakura's body was still pressed against his as tightly as it has been last night. The feeling of her still made him shiver with exhausted pleasure. Several years of pent-up sexual tension and tortured fantasies had finally been realised, and it occurred to him that he couldn't remember the last time he had felt so utterly…content.

'Content' was the right word, he decided. 'Happy' didn't quite cut it, for beneath that transient chemical high there was something stronger, a feeling of total safety that his career as a shinobi had never really allowed for. Haruno Sakura was the most beautiful, capable woman he'd ever known, and here she was, lying in _his_ arms. He felt like he could take on the world, but for once didn't actually need to. He could simply lie there, at peace.

A fleck of ash landed on Sakura's eyelashes, grey on pink. He brushed it away as carefully as possible, but Sakura still stirred at the touch.

"Good morning," he murmured, running his thumb across her cheek. She blinked sleepily, taking in the morning and the naked man beside her.

"Good morning yourself. Did the fire go out?"

"Some time in the night. Are you cold?"

"Far from it." She sat up slowly, the covers from the bedroll falling down to her navel. "But you're covered in ash."

He curled his arm around her exposed waist. "That's just my hair."

She brushed a hand across his shoulder, to show him the grey flecks it left on her palm. "Also, your hair is silver, not grey."

"I knew I liked you," he murmured, pulling himself forward to rest his head in her lap.

"I suppose I may as well smell like smoke, on top of everything else," Sakura sighed, swiping at her own shoulders.

Kakashi took an exaggerated sniff. "You smell great. Like sex and the outdoors."

Sakura snorted. "That would make a great candle."

"Oh, if only." He moved up her body, continuing to breathe in her sweet scent. His breath felt ticklish against Sakura's breasts, and she squirmed against him just like she had a few hours ago.

He paused at the crook of her neck. There was a mark he had given her, a reddish love bite that had made her cry out his name like it was a prayer. He gave it a soft kiss.

"Shall we get moving? People are still worried about us."

Once again they packed their bags, and even though it was a ritual they had performed thousands of times together, it was a different experience in the afterglow of the night before. They talked and joked and touched each other playfully as they collected their clothes from where they had left them strewn around the clearing. Kakashi found Sakura's shorts and panties tangled together at the base of a tree. He remembered peeling them down her legs with excruciating slowness, pausing at her knee so he could run his hand back up her now-exposed thigh. The memory almost distracted him from the task at hand, but before long they were fully clothed and back on the path to home.

The last stretch seemed to fly by, so refreshed were they by the healing and rest, and so excited by the prospect of returning home at last. The gates of Konoha loomed ahead, and they strode forward to greet the guards.

The guards, Izumo and Kotetsu, stared at them both with wide eyes and slack mouths. Sakura's heart sank.

"Hey guys, long time no see," she said, waving awkwardly. They continued to stare, and she dropped her hand.

"Let me guess, you heard about what happened on our last mission."

Izumo finally snapped out of his shock, and gave the pair a rueful smile. "Clearly not the whole story."

Sakura shrugged sheepishly, and Kakashi scratched the back of his head. "I suppose it's pointless to ask if the Hokage heard the rumours?" he asked.

Kotetsu snorted. "Yeah, she knows."

"If I were you, I'd go straight to Hokage tower and give your report," Izumo said. "Tsunade-sama has already started making arrangements for Sakura-san's funeral, and it would bring her great comfort to know that it can now be cancelled."

"Or at least postponed until she kills me herself," Sakura groaned, already turning to leave. "I can't believe everyone knows already!"

Kakashi almost reached out to hug her before realising that they were back in mixed company. Instead he turned the movement into a brief pat on the shoulder. "Let's go sort this out."

"Bye Sakura! We're glad you're alive," Kotetsu waved after them, and Izumo elbowed him in the ribs.

Sakura was going to go through the actual doors of Hokage tower, but Kakashi led her up the building's exterior instead. It would be quicker, if less proper, to just pop in through Tsunade's window like he usually did; plus it meant they wouldn't have to stop and explain things to every person they met along the way.

Tsunade was alone in her office for once, head resting in her left hand while the right swirled a carafe of saké.

"Tsunade-shishou?" Sakura called tentatively from behind, then flinched as the carafe shattered in her mistress' grip.

Tsunade span around in her chair, bloodshot eyes taking in the pair of shinobi who were currently squatting on her windowsill. Kakashi raised one hand in his usual lazy greeting, but her eyes were focused on her former pupil. Sakura was biting her lip and twisting her gloves between her hands, but she met her gaze levelly.

"I'm sorry I worried you, Tsunade-shishou."

Tsunade was out of her chair and pulling the girl into her arms, yanking her through the window and crushing her against her chest. "I don't know why I keep worrying about you kids," she sobbed. "You're not like the generations before you. You always seem to come home, no matter what."

"Tsunade-shishou…" Sakura returned her mistress' literally bone-crushing embrace with equal force.

"But enough of that," Tsunade released her grip suddenly. "You can't imagine what kind of drama you've caused this village, and it's your job to make it right."

"Tsunade-shishou…"

"No excuses, Sakura! I don't know if you're aware, but we've already started planning your memorial service. A village's worth of catering, drinks and flowers doesn't just undo itself overnight!"

Kakashi coughed. "We heard from the recovery team that Sai only arrived with the news about twenty-four hours ago. Maybe if you'd waited a little longer before spreading the word…"

Tsunade seemed to ignore him, striding to the doors and throwing them open. "Shizune! Naruto-kun! Get in here at once!"

"I thought you wished to be left alone, Tsunade-sam—Sakura!" Shizune stepped into view, clapping her hands to her mouth at the sight of the kunoichi. "Oh, I'm so glad you're okay! Both of you, of course," she added, bowing briefly to Kakashi, who nodded back. "Ah, let me get Naruto. He's holed himself up in one of the downstairs offices." She span on her heel and bustled from the office just as quickly as she appeared, but Sakura caught a glimpse of her wiping her eyes as she left.

After that, things happened very quickly. Naruto sprinted into the room, wild-eyed, and practically knocked Sakura over with the force of his bear-hug. After Sakura and Kakashi explained everything that had happened to them after Sai left (with some exceptions), Tsunade ordered them to go out and spread the news that Sakura was alive and Kakashi was no longer critically wounded.

Naruto insisted upon tagging along, of course, and neither Sakura nor Kakashi had the heart to object, even though it meant further delays before they could shower, change clothes, and have a few important conversations that they had been able to avoid before now. For example, how soon after clearing up the rumour of Sakura's death would be too soon to go public about their relationship?

"We should find Sai first," Naruto said, full of his usual vigour. If Shizune hadn't confided to Sakura that the boy had been utterly heartbroken by the news of her death, it would have been easy to assume he had weathered the whole ordeal without losing his sunny disposition. Sakura and Kakashi readily agreed. Sai had been part of their team, and the mission wasn't really over until they were all reunited.

Sai wasn't at his apartment. They knocked and called out and eventually just broke in, but the place was empty. They decided to go to Ino's place next, mostly to put her mind at ease, but also because she was one of the biggest gossips in Konoha, and therefore a useful ally in spreading the word about Sakura.

Along the way they were stopped by almost every person they encountered, all of whom rushed to Sakura's side and expressed their joy at seeing her safe. Kakashi watched the people, both shinobi and civilians, many of whom he had never seen in his life. Sakura seemed to know everyone's name, as well as the names of all their loved ones as she asked after their health. It took a long time to get from Sai's place to the Yamanaka Flower Shop as a result, but Kakashi thought it was worth it to watch Sakura work her magic.

"Maybe you should think about becoming Hokage," Kakashi murmured to her as they finally got free of the crowd. "You could give Naruto a run for his money when it comes to 'adoration of the people'."

Sakura laughed softly. "They're just patients of mine. Naruto-kun's still the Number One beloved ninja in all Konoha."

"That's right," Naruto turned back to the pair as he walked, "and don't you two forget it!"

Kakashi smiled as Sakura teased Naruto about usurping him as Hokage. The whole thing felt easy, just like before. After the war, when he had started becoming actual friends with Sakura, it felt like re-entering the world. He owed the strength of so many friendships to her love and patience. Suddenly he didn't feel so apprehensive about what other people would think of his relationship with her. He trusted their friends.

The flower shop's usual riot of colours had been replaced with a façade of black and white. Black paper peeked out from under sprays of lilies and carnations, the traditional flowers of mourning. The interior was much the same. It seemed every other flower had been removed and replaced with giant arrangements of sorrow.

The counter was abandoned, with no sign of the blonde. Sakura shrugged at her companions, and began to lead the way out the back. "Ino?" she called softly, "It's me, Sakura. Please don't scream."

Ino did scream when they finally found her, but not just because her best friend was back from the dead. She was sitting on the counter-top of the little kitchen out back, where the flowers were cut and washed. And Sai was leaning against the counter, his hands tangled in her long blonde hair and his lips caught in hers.

"That explains why you weren't home," Kakashi remarked after Ino had stopped screaming. Sai blushed a little, but neither he nor Ino could stay embarrassed for long.

"I'm so sorry I didn't go back for you right away, Sakura-chan!" Sai said, shaking his head. "I could have gotten you help sooner."

"Don't be silly, you did the right thing getting Kakashi out. Besides, the river carried me away so quickly that it would have been difficult to find me even if you had looked."

Ino, like Tsunade, seemed caught between hugging Sakura and scolding her. "I can't believe you split up like that! How stupid and reckless could you possibly be? Do you know how much I've worried? Or how Sai felt? To say nothing of poor Tsunade-sama. And just look at Naruto; I mean, I know he's laughing right now, but this time yesterday he was inconsolable!" As the men drifted into their own conversation, Sakura continued to listen sympathetically to all of her friend's complaints about the funeral flowers she had ordered, which would now go to waste.

When Ino finally paused to think of more things to blame Sakura for, the pink-haired woman spoke up.

"So…you and Sai, huh? Tell me about that."

Ino opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. "That's, er…that's new." She watched Sai as he listened to Naruto, and smiled a little. "New, but nice. Especially now that we no longer have to worry about organising your funeral."

"Once again, I'm very sorry for almost dying; believe it or not, it inconvenienced me too. But I am glad that some good things came out of it, at least."

"Things? As in, plural?" Ino's eyebrows rose with curiosity.

Sakura hesitated for a moment, unsure of how much she should say before talking to Kakashi. But Kakashi saved her the worry by choosing that moment to stride over and placed a masked kiss on her forehead.

"Sorry, but Sakura and I are overdue for some well-deserved rest. Can we trust the rest of you to spread the word while we head home and shower?" Nobody responded right away, but he was already grabbing Sakura's arm heading for the door anyway. "Thanks, guys."

"About time!" Ino yelled at their backs, while Naruto hooted with laughter and Sai gave his usual soft smile.

 **Epilogue**

 _Dear Sakura,_

 _If you thought you owed us any kind of debt for looking after you the night the laboratory fell, consider it repaid. The kindness we have been shown by your people these last few months has already improved our lives tenfold. As you know, we have relocated the camp away from the mountain. Thanks to your assistance, we are now strong and independent enough to officially call ourselves Silver Village, and have recently completed the construction of a proper medical centre. I thank you for personally overseeing the training of the villagers that were sent to study medicine in Konoha. They tell me you are the founder of the children's mental health program that is now doing so much good for our people._

 _Reed Village seems to have improved as well. They have accepted technology back into their lives, and even though the emergence of silver eyes in their midst has not stopped, the numbers have not increased either. I continue to be quietly optimistic that the relationship between Reed and Silver will grow more amiable through the example set by Konoha._

 _Speaking of relationships, I was overjoyed to receive your latest letter, along with your wedding invitation. I will of course be attending as the representative of Silver Village. We wish you and Kakashi every happiness in the world as you embark on this new adventure together._

 _Until then,_

 _Yumi_

 **THE END**

 **A/N: Thanks for reading!**


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